Catcher in the Rye's Fictional Influence

As we've discussed in class, The Catcher in the Rye was an immensely popular book nearly from its publish date. Honestly, this fact seems evident from just reading the text; the more we dig into J.D Salinger's novel, the more frequently certain well-known young adult novel tropes seem to pop up. Seriously though, I've been getting killer fiction-deja vu in some of these sections, when the narrator's accessible first-person narrative drifts into familiar territory. Let me highlight a couple of these for you!

Like Mr. Mitchell, I had literally no preconceptions of what this book would be like. For some reason I thought it was a Mark Twain piece about a farm boy, or at least that was the image in my head. Thanks to that, the (in my opinion) oft-imitated introduction really struck me with how recognizable it sounded. For one, the narrator starting off in a far-off place, looking back at his version of the events is a resonant trope in tons of fiction, especially stuff with a funny intruding narrator or noir films (you're probably wondering how I got here). But in this case, we aren't yet privy to his location or end situation, except that it involves "madman stuff that happened to [Holden] last Christmas", and that he is currently "out here" to "take it easy". The "if you really want to hear about it" as the opening line solidifies the narrator as possibly sarcastic, confessional, world-weary with the events that have happened to him, and certainly 4th wall breaking, which is for sure a popular narrative style today (3). Holden also shows his quite common sentiment of being weary for phoniness, as he expresses with disdain for his now Hollywood-working "hot-shot" brother, who used to be WAY cooler when he just wrote weird stories for his own amusement. I don't think I'm alone here in saying that lots of angsty narrators are PO'd for this exact reason in their respective novels.

Let's get a little further into Caufield's ideology, specifically how it relates to his relationships with other people. The Jane plot thread, featuring a remarkably quirky love interest whose beauty and value only he sees including  a mean drunkard guardian and a moronic jock pursuing her is, well, often present in these sorts of YA-appealing novels and films. Like many other aspects, I wouldn't be too surprised if tCitR popularized the trope itself. This whole kings-in-the-back-row spiel is an extremely apt example of this, establishing some kind of memorable trait that distinguishes the narrator's worldview and search for true, non-phony beauty in things. You can carry that over to the enchanting anecdotes of his seemingly perfect siblings Allie and Phoebe, with their poetic baseball gloves and startling maturity. Especially with Allie and Jane, they each make their own rules in the "game of life" that Holden so strongly objects to, and his loss of both of them seems to lead into his mental instability. Each story is extremely cute though, and the format of using a character quirk to create a semi-superficial, idealized projection of that person is a commonly used aspect in narrative fiction, plays, and films. I think it echoes how the human mind makes associations under the influence of love, where the best or most memorable aspects kind of speak for the person's value as a whole, if that makes any sense at all. Those sections are easily the most touching we've had thus far, and it's easy to imagine lots of future writers imitating that style to effectively convey the emotions they feel.

There's my brief analysis on the two shockingly familiar aspects I've picked up on so far. Maybe I'm in some kind of post-Dedalus afterburn, but this is one of the most accessible books I've ever read. That in itself seems to be a movement of the present day in fiction, where authors make YA novels increasingly slangy and easy in the vocab and narrative voice department to wholly immerse readers into the coming-of-age story. It's a trapping of the genre as a whole for sure, and I feel like Catcher has something to do with it!!