"Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me." So begins Holden Caulfield’s caustic assault on the Hollywood studio, a symbol of burgeoning 1950s materialism and artistic hypocrisy and, closer to home, the corruptor of his brother's fiction. This self-professed censor of film, however, goes out of his way to mention movies, movie-goers, actors, and even depicts his own stylized death scene, patterned after a gangster-film hit, all indicating that Holden is caught between an abhorrence and a love affair with movies. What a hypocrite! And yet, what a funny hypocrite!
Holden was the first literary teenager in the age of the teenager. Before the war, teenagers were not much different from adults: they could work for a living, as there were few child labor laws. Only a relative few went to college or had any mobility or disposable income. None of them had much of a personality. None of them rebelled.
And then there was Holden Caufield. After him, there have been a lot of Holden Caufields.
In the post-war boom, teenagers like Holden were going off to prep schools, movies, clubs, and friends' houses like never before, largely due to the automobile and disposable income. And largely due to him. His rebellious voice gave them rebellious voices. Their freedom has been as such ever since.
Holden gave a voice to this new subculture of American youth. He echoed the same spirit of rebellion that Huck Finn echoed generations earlier. He too was disenfranchised by the materialism of the mainstream culture. Holden broke away from the illegitimate society and formed a traveling community of one. His humorous voice resounded with his readers then and now.
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