It is nearly half-a-century since the publication of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and the short novel has gone through hundreds of printings. Authentic popular fiction of authentic literary distinction is rather rare. Does The Catcher in the Rye promise to be of permanent eminence, or will it eventually be seen as an idealistic period-piece, which I think will be the fate of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Toni Morrison's Beloved, works as popular as Catcher continues to be.
The literary ancestors of Holden Caulfield rather clearly include Huck Finn and Gatsby, dangerous influences upon Salinger's novel. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remains Mark Twain's masterwork, central to Faulkner, Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and the other significant novelists of their generation. The Great Gatsby endures as Fitzgerald's classic achievement, capable of many rereading. Rereading The Catcher in the Rye seems to me an aesthetically mixed experience-sometimes poignant, sometimes mawkish or even cloying. Holden's idiom, once established, is self-consistent, but fairly limited in its range and possibilities, perhaps too limited to sustain more than a short story.
And yet Holden retains his pathos, even upon several rereading. Manhattan has been a descent into Hell for many American writers, most notably in "The Tunnel" section in Hart Crane's visionary epic, The Bridge.
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