Indeed a case can be made that "The Catcher in the Rye" created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since. It was a short leap indeed from "The Catcher in the Rye" to "The Blackboard Jungle" to "Rebel Without a Cause" to Valley Girls to the multibillion-dollar industry that adolescent angst is today. The first time I read Catcher in HS, I too thought it was a manifesto for all adolescents of my era. I ended up reading it again a decade later, and realized it was more of a diagnosis of a mentally unfit individual. I think Salinger originally wrote it as a sad story of a misfit, but then it got picked up and misinterpreted as the voice of generation.
Regarding Hemingway, his best works were his original short stories featuring Nick Adams (ie Hemingway).