Writing Style
The Catcher in the Rye is written in a subjective style from the point of view of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes; for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences.
Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time. Words and phrases that frequently appear include:
- "Phony": Superficial, hypocritical, and pretentious
- "That killed me": I found that hilarious or astonishing
- "Flit": Homosexual
- "Flitty": Homosexual behavior
- Wuddya: (the ya slang) vernacular rendering, idiomatic
- "Crumby": Inadequate, insufficient, and/or disappointing
Read more about this topic: The Catcher In The Rye
Famous quotes containing the words writing and/or style:
“A song is no song unless the circumstance is free and fine. If a singer sing from a sense of duty or from seeing no way to escape, I had rather have none. Those only can sleep who do not care to sleep; and those only write or speak best who do not too much respect the writing or the speaking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)