Why is Holden Caulfield nearly universally seen as "a symbol of purity and sensitivity" (as "The Oxford Companion to American Literature" puts it) when he's merely self-regarding and callow?What were the roots of the shallow rebellion of the '60s, the years that warped our culture and continue to plague us? Some critics have argued that the most pernicious ideas of that era were planted still earlier, by the self-styled rebels of the Beat Generation. Salinger, a great hero to the boys of my era, was arguably the most influential of those writers.
The Beat Generation were unashamedly pro-American. They fancied themselves the offspring of Whitman and celebrate the American landscape.
The sixties saw the simultaneous mass marketing of the "hep cat" and perceived disallusionment with the status quo.