Dec 21, 2009

Kinflicks | Literary Precedents

Several critics, including the New Yorker's, have compared the book to The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1951), a much shorter coming-of-age novel which mixes satire with seriousness and blasphemy. But Holden Caulfield, in The Catcher in the Rye, was a much more substantial and visible character in his own right than the amorphous Ginny. Holden rebelled against conformity while Ginny conforms to her surroundings of the moment.

A more likely comparison is to Erica Jong's best-selling comic sexual odyssey, Fear of Flying (1973), whose popularity (as...