is that Holden Caulfield, a total jerk, is a member of a very tiny class that hardly anyone can relate to.
He's from a wealthy family who can continue to buy his way into yet another private school as he is thrown out of the last one It would be interesting to find out the actual statistics of what percentage of kids went to private school back when Salinger was that age, and then when the book was published, and now. It would always have been a minority of kids. Which means Caulfield is from a privileged minority that most cannot relate to.
I chose to send my kids to a private school mainly because my oldest son was being bullied in the public school, and we were fortunate enough to have that choice. And as bad as the public schools in my rather affluent area were, the private school was a real eye-opener about what privilege could bring about. Fortunately, we were no where near as rich as many of the parents at that school. Unfortunately, Holden Caulfield would have fit in quite well. While that school didn't have kids who'd been through several other private schools along the way, it did have ones whose parents replaced crashed luxury cars with apparently no qualms. Our comparative poverty stood us in good stead.
But I can tell you that my younger son, who was in the private school starting in third grade, had absolutely no connection whatsoever with Caulfield. I think too much has changed since the novel was written, too much has changed from the world Salinger is conveying, for kids today (and that son would have read Catcher a good fifteen years ago) to begin to connect with it.
So okay. The language is more realistic. BFD. Caulfield is still a jerk, still a child of privilege that has little or no connection to the present.
So okay. All of us are in some sort of minority or another. But when someone chooses to write about whatever particular group, that author needs to make us understand and relate to that person, that group. But Salinger utterly fails at this. Caulfield is a jerk. A self-involved, whining asshole who has no clue about anything outside of his own neediness.
It's a stupid book and is simply not worth reading. It is absolutely not worth being required reading for today's students.
I'm guessing your statement about the others in the supposed series is totally tongue-in-cheek. Very Onionesque.
In any case, it's completely overrated. It should be read simply as an example of what the hot house of prep schools could produce.
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