Introductory Notes. Jerome David Salinger, an American novelist and she story writer, is world-known for his novel The Catcher in the 1 (1951)

Jerome David Salinger, an American novelist and she story writer, is world-known for his novel The Catcher in the 1 (1951), a modern variant of the ancient story of initiation. Its m character, Holden Caulfield, runs away from his boarding-sch to New York, where he faces many challenges, dangers and pr< lems.

American critics say that serious interest in Salinger's w< was slight until The Catcher in the Rye "occasioned a bela deluge of critical comment." The literary world of the USA scol< him for social irresponsibility, obfuscation, and obsession w Eastern philosophy and religion. Yet the fact is that his only n< el and a number of short stories made his name realised as thai a real artist.

Although Salinger has a good sense of humour, his vis: of life is of utmost seriousness. Most of his works, though i without a comic touch, are serious, if not sad. His major stor started from 1955, with Franny and Zooey presenting the Gl saga, his most sophisticated work.

Yet The Catcher in the Rye made him popular. The st< of an adolescent boy is an odyssey, a search and a series of capes — a quest. The odyssey begins on a Saturday afternoor Pencey Prep and ends at the New York Zoo on Monday aft noon; though Holden tells his story some months later in Calif nia, where he has been seeing a psychiatrist.

The central conflict of the novel is the traditional one 1 tween innocence and experience. Holden Caulfield is innoci but not altogether naive; he has some knowledge of evil thou

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not himself corrupted by it. More than that, he has a mes-c sense, he wants to save people from sin, their own as well e world's. But like most messiahs, he is a failure: he learns t is impossible to be a catcher in the rye, to save people from ig the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.

The strongest of Holden's aversions is that to the "phony.' Everybody who pretends somebody he is not is a phony lolden. Yet he feels some sympathy towards those phonies pretend in defence. Sometimes the boy overreacts, for the:s of evil are eternal and inescapable. By his own words, "You i ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when re not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you': under your nose."

This book by Salinger is often compared to the greatest xican odyssey of initiation, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. books are similar in their narrative framework, and their col-ial style, in partly using the real speech and partly inventing;cial language, that of adolescence.

In a way, the novel is partly autobiographical, for Holden he reputation of a writer in his school, and other people have gnised his literary talents and tastes. It is a striking detail n a teenager seriously admits that his favourite is not baseball Ireat Gatsby.

For translation, Salinger's novel makes a great challenge s language, which is not easy to deal with. Salinger's ear for)quialisms is perfect, even when he invents some or makes:r functions for others. Those personal words, like phony or iam, ox I mean it, or numerous collocations will cause a trans-■ headache. The Russian translation by Rita Rait-Kovaleva become a classic since the sixties, yet it represents a certain jlator position, tastes and preferences that may have changed e then. The text in translation becomes as if softer, more liter-■ather than colloquial, and somewhat less tensed.

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