“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me.”

And so begins J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” whose protagonist, Holden Caulfield, prefers to start his story on the day he has been expelled from a Pennsylvania prep school for failing grades. The novel is the Monday Book Club’s selection for August and the first in the “coming of age” books for the discussion series.

Salinger

The story follows the teenager as he decides to leave school early for Christmas vacation and spend a long weekend in New York City. For anyone who missed this lesson in high school or college, Holden’s signature is that he is a confused and rebellious teenager who feels alienated from the adult world — which is filled with what he calls “phonies.”

Salinger’s novel is a classic in literature, and a rite of passage for most high school English students, despite the fact that its language and sexual themes have been the subject of many censorship debates since it was first published in 1951. “Catcher” is also Salinger’s only novel; he published 13 short stories and has lived mostly as a recluse ever since.

According to Monday Book Talk discussion leader Carol Campbell, “Holden has been dubbed an antihero, an existential hero, a critic of society, and an unusually self-aware adolescent.”

Campbell is also interested in one review that referred to the book as “a perceptive study of one individual’s understanding of his human condition.” She plans to begin the Monday Book Talk session on Aug. 29 by exploring readers’ perceptions of Holden and the “human condition.”

Campbell also plans to lead the group in a discussion of the various symbols in the book, the meaning of the title and whether the book’s status as a literary “classic” is justified.

To contact Regina C. Davis, use e-mail or call 348-7936.