The Catcher in the Rye was published 63 years ago today. I was forced to read it in college and, worse, forced to teach it in the days when I was too new an educator to set the departmental curriculum. My teenage students were either puzzled by its popularity among critics and [some] teachers or outright hostile towards it. The latter group viewed it as phony sentiment with an annoying protagonist.
The older I get, the more I agree with the latter group. Maybe I'll read it again just to be fair.