)
,
SALINGER'S AUDIENCE
595
The real and pressing needs to which Salinger responds so naturally
have been created by the current plight of the educated middle-class
American family. It all begins with Daddy, who doesn't feel quite loved
enough. He doesn't feel loved enough because he doesn't respect him–
self. He doesn't respect himself because he's not doing any useful
work. Sure, Daddy gets in the car or on the train each morning
and goes down to Madison Avenue or some equivalent place and
makes the wheels turn; but the trouble is that those turning wheels
don't move anything except each other. Daddy feels trapped and un–
manly. He's caught in a world he never made, and when confronted
with its problems yearns to be a child again and blame everything on
the big people.
Daddy's first line of defense against his feelings of helplessness and
emptiness is his family. He tries to draw his family around him like
a cloak, lavishing love and delicacy on the children, offering up his
whole life so that his loved ones might redeem it for him. But Daddy's
big effort fails (and as testimony to his failure we are now getting
a deluge of unhappy suburban marriage novels). How can the kids
respect Daddy when Daddy can't respect himself? The kids are con–
fused; they would like to be dependent on Mommy
&
Daddy and
here Mommy
&
Daddy are dependent on them. They want to watch
what Daddy does to see what's interesting about being a grown-up and
alive, but Daddy is ashamed of what he does and doesn't like to talk
about it. The kids are under pressure: they've got the whole family
riding on their backs. How can they learn to make adult decisions
when all adult decisions are made in terms of
them?
The child-centeredness of the new American suburban family
creates a new social hierarchy. Since adults have abnegated their power
to children, it is in practice more desirable to be a child. And since
an older child has certain advantages over a younger, the child's
power and satisfaction in life increase as he grows older- right up to
that age when he is forced to enter the world of adults. Consequently
the oldest child, the teenager, is king of American society. Because he
spends billions of dollars each year in the consumer market, he ex–
pects that market to be tailored to his tastes-as witness the current
offerings in clothes, music, cars, newspapers, entertainment and
politicians.
Naturally the teenager is loathe to relinquish his topdog position,
and to prolong it will even submit to a college education. What else
is there to do, anyway? Once at college, the teenager is immediately
absorbed into new and improved families of youth, called fraternities,
