Holden Caulfield's legacy

The Catcher in the Rye is, of course, more than a novel. A lightning rod for a new sensibility, a wisdom book for postwar students, a behavior manual for the age of impulse, it has had a life apart from the literary world and cultural significance and staying power beyond its literary value. Inferior in quality to the greatest consciousness--shaping works of American modernism-among them, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises, Invisible Man-it nevertheless has the power to distill states of mind, spark identification, and live beyond its covers. Like certain songs or movie characters, it has become a part of the shared experience of a vast number of people in the second half of the twentieth century. People know the book who haven't read it with any care; others-like nineteenth-century people who had heard about Mr. Pickwick or Anna Karenina-have heard the news of Holden Caulfield just by being alive. There are websites devoted to the novel; people live by it and, although we live in an unArnoldian age, it is probably one of our last remaining literary touchstones-youth and resentment and joy and angst, in book rather than CD, TV, or net form.

It came out in 19 5i, not exactly an annus mirabilis for American literature, but not such a bad year, either. From Here to Eternity was also published and became a bestseller. The gap between the two books is the gap between an older world of naturalism-with its careful chronicling of injustices and hard luck and hard living--and an entirely new rendering of the American situation: the distance between Jones's war in the Pacific and Salinger's peace and prosperity is hardly the crucial point; Catcher has a language, texture, and view of what counts that places it firmly in America's future; From Here to Eternity belongs with the classics of the past. 1951 was not a notable year for cultural change in America, either. Rock 'n roll, Brando's motorcycle in The Wild One, Dean's red jacket in Rebel Without a Cause-the spring blossoms of the coming age of antinomianism-were nowhere in sight. What was plentifully available? Endless anti-communist screeds, anxieties about conformity, books about Social Problems, music that was sentimental and kitschy or part of the wit and heart...