Early in its paperback life, I recall it had an incarnation I hated: a drawing of protagonist Holden Caulfield wearing the Sherlock Holmes-style hat described in the book (but looking much dorkier, somehow, than I had pictured him in my mind). The dustjacket on the original 1951 edition, designed by Michael Mitchell, had a Ben Shahn-style drawing of a carousel horse dwarfing the skyline of uptown Manhattan, an image clearly inspired by the book's "so damn nice" final scene. The book does not have that cover now, and it did not have it when it was first published.
Or read the 2,260(!) customer reviews on Amazon if you doubt its enduring appeal. College admissions officers are resigned to the fact that, if asked to write an essay on The Book That Changed My Life, the majority of students will pick Catcher in the Rye. Salinger (which continues to this day.) I took it home, brought it to my room, began reading, and didn't move a muscle until I was done. Was this book making the same claim to authority? And that title: what did it mean? I had heard, somehow, that Catcher in the Rye was transgressive and quirky, although I couldn't have known then of all the local school boards that had sought to ban it (as they do to this day), or of the self-imposed isolation of its author, J.D. I think the only other book I knew at that point that had a type-only cover was the Bible. Handlettered titles for that "youthful" feel.Ĭatcher in the Rye was different. Punks in leather jackets, preppies in checked button-down shirts and khakis. The other books on the rack - It's Like This, Cat The Outsiders Go Ask Alice Irving and Me - all had illustrations on the front, usually peculiarly out-of-date, although perhaps only by months in the fast-moving time continuum of teenage fashion. It was in the "Young Adult" section of my local library, on a rotatable wire rack. I can still remember the first time I saw it. Yet, using nothing more than these peculiar - dare I say crumby? - ingredients, the cover of the old Bantam paperback edition of The Catcher in the Rye has the power to move me like few other pieces of graphic design. One of the most generic typefaces in the world, Times Roman, set in all capitals, two slightly different sizes, with no particular finesse. Solid maroon with lemon yellow type: it looks like PMS 194 and PMS 116. It's a strange, even ugly, color combination.
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