I don’t get it. This book is what gave people the idea that whiny, angst-ridden teenagers had something to say to the world. It’s been all downhill since then.
I have to agree with you.
It may have started a downward trend.
Catcher in the Rye was written by an adult for adults. You may like or dislike it. However, it is an attempt to analyze a weak adolescent's failure to come to grips with adult sexuality in a 'phony' world.
Holden Caulfield must use that word 100 times in the book. Holden wants to be a saint and save all the little kids from falling off the cliff (that's how he pictures the 'catcher in the rye'), meaning he wants to save them from the filthy world of perverted sex, the obscenities routinely scrawled on school walls, girls who wear 'falsies' etc. But he is weak, and follows those impulses rather than retire in seclusion like his older brother D.J. (who represents J.D. Salinger).
He unrealistically projects his kid sister Phoebe as a sort of saint, and breaks down at the end of the story while watching her innocently riding on a carousel. It's the knowledge that her innocence won't last that causes his mental breakdown. The entire story is related in the first-person as one long uninterrupted talk to a psychotherapist.
For an upbeat coming of age story by Salinger, read De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period. It's in Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.