The Mother (Father?) Of All Bildungsroman

Can you name the book that begins as follows?

"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 and all 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."

Published on this date in 1951, the novel reached number one on the New York Times best-seller list within two weeks and has sold 65 million copies.  It’s one of those books that has entered our national psyche, and its narrator/protagonist personified the alienation of many adolescents in the post-war era.  It’s been called “the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager” and is regularly included in “best 100 novels” lists.

Not everyone agrees, of course. The novel is filled with profanity and situations that in the 1950s were not commonly described so explicitly, especially in fiction that young people might read.  In the 1970s, several U.S. high school teachers who assigned the book were fired or forced to resign. In 1981 it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States.

The author, a famously reclusive man (who, by the way, shared the first and middle initials of our Patch editor), published many short stories and several more novels, but is remembered most for this one. 

So—what’s the name of this most marvelous work?  And did you love it, or hate it, when you read it as a young person?