Holden Caulfield at 60

It's the 60th anniversary of the publication of Salinger's famous book, The Catcher in the Rye. Rumpus looks back.

From the piece...

When J. D. Salinger passed away in early 2010, his most well-known character, Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield, was called “America’s best-known literary truant” by the New York Times[1]; “perpetually at war with adulthood” by The Times of London[2]; and “the original angry young man” by Time magazine: “Salinger created Caulfield at the very moment that American teenage culture was being born…A whole generation of rebellious youths discharged themselves into one particular rebellious youth”[3]. As Normal Mailer, in significantly less charitable terms, once put it, Salinger is “no more than the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school” (467).

Holden’s influence has indeed thrown many millions of American teens into active, mostly aimless rebellion, and seen multiple generations of Americans through their “difficult age”–both behaviorally and historically. It’s easy to mark him as the standard-bearer for the adolescent malcontent that has preoccupied America since roughly the end of the Second World War. In fact, it’s too easy. Like a Zen koan, it manages to un-answer itself. Being misunderstood is Holden’s milieu, so calling him a hormone case or a passing phase and filing him away in the young adult section of life underestimates his impact.