The Effect of Perspective

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. - XMASTIME

Article here on The Holden Caulfield Effect:

When I first read the book, I was younger than the character, and he seemed mature and kind of glamorous, what with all the walking around Manhattan alone, the casual drinking of alcohol, and the making of plans. I'm more than twice his age now, and glamorous and mature are probably the last words I'd use to describe him....For ubiquity alone (at least for now), Holden Caulfield's probably the prime example of this kind of emotional doppler effect. He sounds like one thing as you move toward him and like something completely different as you move past, even though he's just standing there, in that red-covered book, making the same sound the whole time. His pitch hasn't changed, and I can still hear him loud and clear — even as I move farther and farther away.

And hits the nail re: Reality Bites too:

It does, however, make me far more sympathetic to Ben Stiller's character in Reality Bites — who seemed like a greedy pariah when I first saw the movie and now seems like the only person with his shit even a little bit together. When someone puts your video babbling on MTV, you're supposed to say thank you. Again, I still enjoy the hell out of that movie, but I no longer see it as a fantasy; I see it as a cautionary tale.