Books of innocence and experience : holden Caulfield's Scandinavian brotherhood

Within a couple of years of its publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was translated into the major Scandinavian languages. A few protagonists of the Scandinavian novel of the twentieth century mirror, more or less overtly, the iconic character of Holden Caulfield with his finely tuned observations on the ways of the world: David in the novel Rend mig i traditionerne (1958) by Leif Panduro, Janus in Den kroniske uskyld (1958) by Klaus Rifbjerg, and Erik in the Finland-Swedish writer Lars Sund’s work Natten är ännu ung (1975). As to content, what the three novels share with Salinger’s prototype is the frame of the (psychiatric) clinic, the breakdown of an adolescent, the death of a family member or a close friend, the motives of rebellion and escape, and the opposition between innocence and experience. As to form, all novels are retrospective accounts given in the first person singular and written in seemingly casual teenage slang. This essay discusses one of the features central to Salinger’s book and common to the three Scandinavian novels, i.e., the way in which the adolescent protagonist reacts to and interacts with standardised behaviour and ready-made mannerisms provided by works of literature and films. This is seen as an aspect of Holden’s concern with phoniness (a theme which also engrosses the minds of his Nordic brothers) and is interpreted as a strategy in the transition from ‘innocence’ to ‘experience’.