J.D. Salinger’s character, Holden Caulfield, caught me from the first sentence of the book, The Catcher in the Rye, with the line:

“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.”

From this short introduction you already get a sense of Holden’s character and how cynical he is, which sets you up...