SOURCE: Steinle, Pamela Hunt. “The Catcher Controversies as Cultural Debate.” In In Cold Fear: The Catcher in the Rye Censorship Controversies and Postwar American Character, pp. 106-39. Columbus, Oh.: Ohio State University Press, 2000.

In the excerpt below, Steinle examines the various reasons cited for withdrawing J. D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye from school district curricula in the 1950s through the 1980s.

Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? … Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag.

—Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

The arguments over The Catcher in the Rye lead a sort of rhetorical double life: as the singular statements of individual...