Manhattan Adult Entertainment: John Walsh: At last, here was an author who wrote the way people spoke
The Glass family saga has been celebrated and derided over the years, but the reputation of The Catcher in the Rye seems set to endure as the classic novel of teenage rebellion. It heralded something new and different in serious literature – a modern vernacular voice, hesitant, shrugging, slangy, occasionally obscene – narrating a story in the first person as though talking to the reader, complete with a full repertoire of verbal tics like “goddam” and “or something”. It told the story of Holden Caulfield, a troubled teenage scholar who has been expelled from his preparatory school in Pennsylvania and, instead of heading home, goes walkabout in New York. He has encounters with a young prostitute, with his old English master (who makes what seems to be a sexual pass at him in the middle of the night) and his adored younger sister, Phoebe; only at the conclusion do we learn that Holden is currently being treated in some kind of sanitarium. …
See the full article from “Independent”