I was not much of a JD Salinger fan I must admit….I always found THE CATCHER IN THE RYE to be a paean to oversensitivity in keeping with its adolescent narrator but when your narrator is superficial and relates an obvious truth with debatable merits as to whether it needs telling in the first place, the work you produce ends up seeming superficial.
However, JD Salinger exposed something that maybe wasn’t as big a problem when he wrote CATCHER but clearly became more of a problem in the decades that followed and that is the obsession with adolescence that America seems to have.
The post World War II discovery that youth culture and the youth market was a viable market to target for consumer goods especially clothes, entertainment, and beauty products aided and abetted by rock and roll launched a different way of thinking about spending of disposable income.
This coupled with much of the social experimentation of the 1960’s but not retaining the 60’s generation sense of social responsibility has created the modern day middle-aged adolescent who has a very different sense of what are boundaries and responsibilities than past generations.
One of out every two marriages ends in divorce, credit card debt has skyrocketed, unhealthy habits such as eating and smoking and other societal ills-these are all part and parcel of a society where the adults refuse to grow up.
I’m all for “you’re only as old or as young as you feel” and also understand that we forgive adolescents and children when they make mistakes as they are not yet equipped to always make the best decisions about their own life….However there is a point in one’s life where the excuses have to stop.
One can see the attitude of the perpetual adolescent in American foreign policy….The idea that everything is black and white and that there are only heroes and villains is a very naïve notion….Forgetting about history and focusing on only the now is another juvenile trait
It can also be seen in domestic policy where people want things like good schools, healthcare, safe neighborhoods, etc. but are unwilling to have their taxes raised to pay for them….This is the logic of a child.
I’m not sure JD Salinger knew what he was tapping into and predicting with THE CATCHER IN THE RYE but his reclusive behavior could have been a result of what he saw and how he related it to his own work….After all, the culture of celebrity is yet another example of American perpetual adolescence
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Prior to WWII, children and teenagers in America were largely ignored by society in general. Both age groups were considered unimportant and not worth the time or consideration of the adult world. Almost nothing was marketed at them, including clothing. Children's clothing produced for sale was non-existent. Mothers and grandmothers had to make their own. Leisure equipment for children was unheard of. A kid wanted a bicycle? He waited until he was old enough to climb on an adult version. Not sure why this began to change in the early 1950s. Was it the lost childhood of the Depression-era generation which began this steady transformation into perpetual adolescent obsession?
Could be, Nate, or it could be a lot of other factors....The beginning of the post World War II baby boom coupled with the seeming post WWII affluence, the change in culture started by rock and roll movies etc., the more stable life no wars or depressions to keep youngster busy, the fact that teenagers now had lives outside their families as a result of these factors.
All morons hate it when you call them a moron. - J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 6
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