Hello and welcome to Slate's Audio Book Club. I'm Stephen Metcalf, Slate's Critic-at-Large, and I'm joined

today by Jamie Ryerson, editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. Jamie, welcome. Thank you so much for coming in.

Thanks for having it. And Troy Patterson, Slate's TV critic. Hello, Troy. Howdy. But before we begin,

Troy, why don't you say a word about our sponsor?

Well, I'll do just that.

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And as a special deal for book club listeners, if you sign up for a one

book a month membership, you'll get a free book as a thank you. It doesn't happen that any of

J.D. Salager's books are among the books that Audible has in stock. But you can find there

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More about which in a bit.

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audiblepodcast.com slash slate. All right. Let's get on with it. Thank you, Troy. You're welcome. And today, I think we have a real winner. We're going to talk about J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. I hope it goes without saying Catcher in the Rye is a massive cultural touchstone, at least it was from my generation, and the generation immediately preceding me

and immediately succeeding me. It's a book that's sold. Some estimates claim as high as 65 million

copies, and without the aid of Google or Wiki, I made a quick list of other cultural products

that without Catcher in the Rye would be

literally, I think, unthinkable or at least influenced them massively. All of the works of

Wes Anderson, certainly. The movie's Tadpole and Igby are almost direct facsimiles of

Ketra and the novel PrEP, the movie The Good Girl. And also the Sopranos, I'm curious, Troy, do you remember The Sopranos having as it's taking off point, Ketra in the Rye?

I do, yeah.

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