“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

So begins J.D. Salinger’s iconic novel, Catcher in the Rye, arguably one of the finest opening sentences of any American novel ever written.