TCITR

Like anyone who was a teenager, The Catcher in the Rye had a hold on me in my youth. And I still have a warm spot for it, and nothing stops it from being a really, really good book. But the older I get the less it means to me. I mean, I've never thought to myself "Gee, I wonder what Holden Caulfield would do in this situation" as I might with, say, Tom Joad. At the end of the day, Tom Joad is Paul Westerberg in 1984, and Holden Caulfield is your average Williamsburg hipster in a nouveau-rock art fusion no-bass-included Japanese haiku band: for all we know the last time we read of Tom walking away from Ma is followed by him getting his head bashed in for not being happy to work for 3 cents a day; Holden we're fairly certain will simply end up at another private school for fellow rich kids, and in a  few years he will look back on his melo-dramatic teen years and laugh. Both characters' stories have merit. But only one actually grows with you the more you experience actual life.