There’s an internet debate a’brewin’ over the merits of that perennial high school syllabus placeholder The Catcher in the Rye. Over at Good Magazine, Anne Trubek makes an impassioned plea to replace it with something newer and fresher:

J.D. Salinger’s novel was edgy and controversial when teachers first put it on their syllabi. But that was 50 years ago. Today, Salinger’s novel lacks the currency or shock value it once had, and has lost some of its critical cachet. But it is still ubiquitously taught even though many newer novels of adolescence are available.

Meanwhile, the scribes at Gawker have responded with an equally impassioned WTF? directed at Trubek:

My initial reaction to this would be that we read Catcher in The Rye because everyone on some level at some point loves Catcher in The Rye, and we are fast running out of things we can say that about.