The Romance Reader

I read The Catcher in the Rye for a college English class about two years ago. At the time, the only thing I knew about it was that Mark David Chapman had recreated Holden's walk through Central Park before killing John Lennon, so I really didn't have an idea how I would feel about the book. As I read it, I could understand why it would make someone homicidal because the further I read, the more I wanted to hurt Holden and JD Salinger for writing such a depressingly boring book. The one think that vaguely interested me was the very obvious fact that Holden is bipolar--I did the research, and he fits all of the symptoms. I don't know if this was intentional on Salinger's part (I don't even know if Bipolar Disorder was a valid diagnosis when this book was published), but the case remains that if Holden was a real person living in 21st century America, somebody somewhere would hand him a bunch of Lithium and tell him to go crazy.