I agree with the premise, but would also caveat that Catcher was a much better read for me when I was about the same age as Holden was.  I could identify then with his feelings, with his inability to succinctly sum up his thoughts, with his need to accentuate things that really didn't need accentuating, etc.<p>The style worked for me (even though I'm decidedly not from the era of its original readers) because even though the vernacular is dated, it was still relevant to the mannerisms I spoke with in my teens and (maybe) early twenties.<p>Reading it again now, in my thirties, it is dramatically different.  Not because I've read other books that imitated the style, or because it has become cliche, but because I am very far removed, mentally, from how I was when I first read it.