<P> Peter Beidler, in his A Reader's Companion to J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye", identifies the movie that the prostitute "Sunny" refers to . In chapter 13 she says that in the movie a boy falls off a boat . The movie is Captains Courageous (1937), starring Spencer Tracy . Sunny says that Holden looks like the boy who fell off the boat . Beidler shows (page 28) a still of the boy, played by child - actor Freddie Bartholomew . </P> <P> Each Caulfield child has literary talent . D.B. writes screenplays in Hollywood; Holden also reveres D.B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises Hollywood industry - based movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony" as the writer has no space for his own imagination, and describes D.B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself"; Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove; and Phoebe is a diarist . This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in children attributes that he struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity . Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes . Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher . </P> <P> In their biography of Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno argue that: "The Catcher in the Rye can best be understood as a disguised war novel ." Salinger witnessed the horrors of World War II, but rather than writing a combat novel, Salinger, according to Shields and Salerno, "took the trauma of war and embedded it within what looked to the naked eye like a coming - of - age novel ." </P> <P> The Catcher in the Rye has been listed as one of the best novels of the twentieth century . Shortly after its publication, writing for The New York Times, Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel," while James Stern wrote an admiring review of the book in a voice imitating Holden's . George H.W. Bush called it a "marvelous book," listing it among the books that have inspired him . In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager . Holden is at various times disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic ." Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than Catcher in the Rye captured New York in the fifties ." Jeff Pruchnic wrote an appraisal of The Catcher in the Rye after the death of J.D. Salinger . In this article, Pruchnic focuses on how the novel continues to be received incredibly well, even after it has aged many generations . Pruchnic describes Holden as a "teenage protagonist frozen midcentury but destined to be discovered by those of a similar age in every generation to come". Bill Gates said that The Catcher in the Rye is one of his favorite books ever . </P>

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