An argument above the cover of J.D. Salinger's New Yorker classic tale The Catcher In The Rye is immense between casual and serious readers. The verbally edgy book, tapping a pretentious sixteen year-old New York native as its narrator, sacrifices the narrative intricacy in exchange of a solid characterization. Salinger's main character, Holden Caulfield gets kicked out for the nth time from his all-male school in Pennsylvania, and travels all the way to New York, to spend the excess three days before his dismissal.
Caulfield walks and takes cabs on the streets of New York, ranting on things that make him grimace, which is practically everything. His rants are clever and sensible, although you don't always stick to them; not with him telling that a lot of people is a phony, while it's clear that he, himself is one of his claimed frauds. If this annoys you much, about the same amount I was annoyed, then I guess I'm right about Salinger's concrete characterization for Caulfield. Caulfield criticizes people and things, not knowing that he himself has a lot of critique over his head, or at least he doesn't believe so. He's loathing and annoying, but above all, he's just human. From here I understood how it became a classic, and how critics have been praising it with two hands whooshed up the airs.
How Salinger achieved this is by disposing a chance for a complex narrative to arouse, albeit there are rooms to make the tale as well-characterized as it is now, without throwing away intricacies. Nonetheless, The Catcher In The Rye is already a good book, even better when you don't over think it. 3 out of 5
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