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Every story has a plot—except, perhaps, The Catcher in the Rye. Instead, author J. D. Salinger sends Holden Caulfield off on a series of encounters with “phony” cabdrivers, “phony” (and unhygienic) roommates, and a five-dollar hooker named “Sunny.” No wonder Holden’s gone crazy.

Video Transcription:

There’s no plot in this book. Like seriously none. So what does Holden Caufield, the main character, do for almost 300 pages? He spends a lot of time inside his own head.

OK, so The Catcher in the Rye pretends to have a plot.

Holden Caufield has just been expelled from Pencey, his boarding school, and he decides to spend his last days before going home bumming around New York City.

That’s the skeleton of the story: Holden’s last several hours at Pencey and his few days in New York.

And yeah, Holden does some stuff in the City That Never Sleeps. He spends a lot of time not sleeping himself. He hangs out at a few clubs and bars. He has an unfortunate encounter with a prostitute. He goes on a date. He sees a few flicks. He walks through Central Park in the dead of night.

And then he has a nervous breakdown.

That’s what’s really memorable about this plot—if you can call it that. The book opens and closes with Holden in some kind of mental institution. And everything that happens in between isn’t really so much about what Holden does as it is about what he’s thinking.

In sum, if you’re looking for Act I, Act II, and Act III in this story, you’ll be disappointed. But if you’re looking for the signs of Holden’s mental disintegration … well, maybe you’ve found a plot after all.