Favourite Thing #5 -- The Catcher in the Rye

I occasionally meet people who have never read The Catcher in the Rye or read it later in life and didn't get it. This is usually a sign from the universe that we will never hook up.

Fact is the work is such a seminal influence on my literary development that I can't even conceive of my reading life without it. We wouldn't have David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Jonathan Franzen -- hell, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer, if it weren't for Salinger and Holden Caulfield.

Salinger is the prime mover.

So we come to today's favourite thing.

Everybody's got that one irreplaceable thing they'd save in a fire. Mine is a first book club edition of JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It's all the more rare because it has Salinger's picture on the dust jacket. I bought it as a gift to myself for surviving my Masters Thesis.

Other gifts I gave myself for surviving my Masters Thesis were sessions on a tanning bed (third degree burns) and purple hair (they said it was a temporary rinse, but they lied).

What can I say. Stress does strange things to a person.