I first read this book when I was the same age as Holden Caulfield, which would have been 45 years ago. It was probably wasted on me then, but as an adult I can see the human condition in Holden’s predicament. He’s lost his way in the world, stuck as he is in the moment between childhood and adulthood, and nothing is dependable just at the moment when he needs something to believe in. Adults are phonies or creeps; even his favorite teacher, Mr. Antonini, turns out to be “perverty,” or is he? Holden can’t be sure. His four-day escape from the prep school that’s about to expel him turns into his walkabout during which he tries to rekindle old relationships and revisit familiar places, in an attempt to find a connection, to feel something. But still he keeps his real connections—Jane Gallagher, a girl he always admired, his sister Phoebe, and his dead brother Allie—at arm’s length. “One of my troubles is, I never care too much when I lose something,” he tells us. “Some guys spend *days* looking for something they lost. I never seem to have anything that if I lost it I’d care too much” (89). Read in the context of today’s mass shootings committed by young white men alienated from meaningful connections with community, ‘Catcher in the Rye’ points to the fragility of family, school, peers, and the “American dream” for so many, without really solving the problem. Caring for someone more vulnerable ultimately pulls Holden back from the brink, but can it last? Even he makes no promises. “If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even *half* the ‘Fuck you’ signs in the world,” he warns us, “It’s impossible” (202).