The Catcher in the Rye - Reaction To Writing Style

When I first started reading The Catcher in the Rye, I had no clue what the book was even about.  The copy I have has no beginning summary on the back or anything like that, so I began reading with an open mind.  When I first started reading, I was unsure if I even had the right book, because there was a lack of complexity in the words. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don'f feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." (Salinger 1).  I thought something must have been wrong.  I thought maybe it was a parody of some sort, then I shortly realized that this was, in fact, the classic from the 1950s that I was actually supposed to be reading.  There is a simplicity to the book that makes it a breeze to read, and allows you to focus more of the mental aspects of the characters rather than the wording and phrasing.
I only realized at the end that the main character, Holden Caulfield, is actually in a hospital (Salinger 213).  I wondered throughout the book where he was telling the story from.  Because the story is told from the point of view of a maturity-confused psychiatric patient, obviously the literature is not going to be difficult to read.  I believe that the point of the story was to make the reader really think about what they were reading.  The reader must not only read the words, but also read what is not written.  I loved that the focus was mainly on what was really behind all the strange behaviors and risks of Holden Caulfield.    
This book was unlike any classic novel I've read before, but I have not read anything else from J.D. Salinger.  The  thought-provoking material from this book makes me want to learn more about the relationship between Salinger and Holden Caulfield, and read more into the background of the book.  


Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991