Holden's Weekend

Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old expelled from his fourth prep school, wandering through New York City during a long weekend of loneliness, confusion, and mounting psychological crisis. His voice — sarcastic, digressive, desperately honest — defined the literary teenager.

Holden narrates from what appears to be a mental health facility or sanatorium. His defining word is "phony" — his term for the hypocrisy, pretension, and emotional dishonesty he sees saturating the adult world around him.