 The book 's initial success was followed by a brief lull in popularity , but by the late 1950s , according to Ian Hamilton , it had " become the book all brooding adolescents had to buy , the indispensable manual from which cool styles of disaffectation could be borrowed . " It has been compared to Mark Twain 's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Newspapers began publishing articles about the " Catcher Cult " , and the novel was banned in several countries — as well as some U.S. schools — because of its subject matter and what Catholic World reviewer Riley Hughes called an " excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language " . According to one angry parent 's tabulation , 237 instances of " goddamn , " 58 uses of the synonym for a person of illegitimate birth , 31 " Chrissakes , " and one incident of flatulence constituted what was wrong with Salinger 's book . 
