It dealt with the sort of “angst” I had as a teen, which was perhaps of a slightly more existential variety than most.
Maybe the fact that people are arguing passionately about a book that was written over 50 years ago testifies it as a classic. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not.
Of course, most people would find that a rather specious argument.
Like it or not, CATCHER IN THE RYE describes a certain state of mind that many young people find themselves in. Their peers are nothing but vapid, and the adult world they are expected to graduate into is even worse. It’s a state of disaffection from not only what is expected of you, but what you expect from yourself. What’s the use of anything? The only relief is a childhood morality (catching people in the rye) that you can never live up to.
If you never found yourself in this position, more power to you. But it is a struggle that many teenagers find themselves in every day.
My favorite analysis of the book described this as a cult novel. Every scene in the book goes on to prove the mindset of the protagonist. So he goes to New York, but it’s not a real New York. Are there any other people beside the characters that affect him?
CATCHER IN THE RYE is a direct screed to your above average intelligence teen who feels disaffected from the rest of his life. If you think of it that way, why would you ever question that this book will always have an audience?
That’s my opinion. But I will tell you that the only reason I read the book was to find out why so many killers had it in their collection. Mystique and teen angst. Why ask why it’s beloved? Shouldn’t it be obvious?
Hello Again, that was a great way to boil down CitR, I suppose now I have to read Franny and Zooey to find out…
Well said, Mofo. I think this book will always have an audience as long as society continues to underestimate the intelligence and emotion that many teenagers have.
I know what you mean, and I know some people do this, but honestly, I think a lot of people just really hate this book. I personally dislike it because I dislike its protagonist. I never identifiesd with him, not as a teenager, and not as an adult. I think he’s a whiny jerk. In fact, I think Holden would be the type of person to hate something simply ‘to appear clever and counter cultural’. He thinks people who are popular and have social skills are ‘phonies’ and he is above them. He doesn’t fit in, so as an outsider he can sit in judgement and declare himself somehow better than they are.
I don’t think the book is poorly written, I just can’t enjoy a book when I hate the main character and don’t care what happens to him.
Esistentialism isn’t angst and the two are not mutually exclusive. You can feel 'em both at the same time. But Siddhartha still has nothing to do with teen angst. Siddhartha could’ve started his quest at 35 and it could’ve been about the same book.
I’m one of the supposedly rare people who feels kind of meh about Catcher in the Rye but Franny and Zooey hit me like a ton of bricks.
Really, what it’s always boiled down to for me is that Salinger is a snob. His characters are more privileged and educated, but on top of that they’re precociously intelligent and introspective. It’s always seemed to me that there are people like that, and there are people who are NOT like that, and that the are so different that it’s almost impossible for them to understand each other. A lot of times they hate each other. Holden looks around at the preppies he knows and their different values and perceptions and ways of expressing themselves drive him nuts. If you asked them their opinion of him it would be just as hostile or more so. I don’t think there’s a lot of value in Holden hating people who aren’t like him, but I don’t think there is much value in people hating Holden either. Usually when someone criticizes Catcher in the Rye, it’s cause they just can’t stand that whiny Holden.
I guess I think there are more non-Holdens than there are Holdens. Most people stop questioning things when it gets past their ability to cope. They aren’t going to spend their lives nit picking about why everyone is running around pretending one thing or another is true when we all know the opposite is the reality. There are all kinds of fun activities they could be doing instead of thinking, or, if they are really attached to thinking, they could focus their intellect on something more productive. That’s all good stuff, and I agree that it would be much better to cure cancer than to sit around contemplating how rotten people are and how fake the world is. But the way I feel about it is that some people can’t take the Holden or Franny out of their souls. If you are inclined to see through situations or to consider reality from more than one or two points of view, eventually you are going to start feeling irritated and freaky and you can either deny it and become a super phoney, or you can struggle with it and try to find a way to reconcile yourself with everything. Salinger writes about people who are trying to reconcile. People who don’t need to, or people who refuse to do that are never going to have patience for it. They will either be completely unable to relate, or they will be so annoyed that anyone would that they will feel nothing but hostility towards the whole thing.
I’m always afraid to say it for fear I will get beat up by a hooligan but I think that the reason most people who hate Holden hate him is that they know he would hate them and they don’t like his scrutiny or the whole spirit of anyone judging people like that. They feel that he has no right to his ‘teen angst’ and that it’s shallow and self-indulgent. The way I see it, Holden is a person who is refining himself and who will grow and be okay and will be able to positively affect the world after he goes through the growing pains. Some people just don’t care about that stuff and for whatever reason, they resent a book about it.
And? I guess we’re just working with different definitions of “angst.” 
That’s a good point.
I think, though, that there’s another reason why some people hate the book and the character: they think Holden is supposed to be a heroic figure. He’s not! He’s wildly inconsistent and just plain messed up! I don’t have time to do a search right now, but I think his name was mentioned in a thread not too long ago about “unreliable narrators”.
For instance. He’s constantly railing against “the movies”: “Now [my brother’s** out in Hollywood, being a prostitute*.” — “The g*ddamn movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.” And so forth. Then, one afternoon, he’s at a loose end, nothing to do until it’s time to start drinking, so what does he do? He goes to a movie. Mr. Integrity.
And then all that blathering about how much he hates to fight. “If only you didn’t have to see the guy’s face while you’re fighting him…I’d rather chop off a guy’s head with an axe or push him out the window than fight him…”, and all the time, I’m thinking, “So what you’re saying here is, you have no balls.”
But I did love the way he deconstructed the film he saw. Which brings me to the reason I love this book: it’s flippin’ hilarious! And not in a MST, so-bad-it’s-good way either, but a very realistic way. Some of the dialogue has me ROFL. Like the discussion with the cab driver about what happens to the ducks, and the fish, in Central Park Lake in the wintertime, and the discussion with Luce, his former Student Adviser. “So do I! So do I regard it [sex] as a waddyacallit—a physical and spiritual experience and all!..Maybe I’ll go to China. My sex life is lousy.”
So all I can say is, if you don’t like it, maybe you’re taking it too seriously. That’s really Holden’s problem, anyway: he takes everything too seriously. So don’t be like him!
(Oh, and Krokodil: I think you meant Seventeen by Booth Tarkington, not Penrod. Penrod and Sam were elementary school kids.)
*When I first read the book, I didn’t realize that there were non-sexual forms of prostitution, and I took that to mean that D.B. was physically whoring himself. “Jeez, no wonder this book was banned!” I thought.