What do you make of the Catcher in the Rye?

I started re-reading the Catcher in the Rye after it got mentioned last week in a post and am now 51% through. My mom hates the book since her childhood. Says he was just a spoiled rich kid. She was raised poor. I’m actually kind of grooving with it, but I’m ambivalent. I mean he seems like a Narcissist at heart. But it’s the kind of Narcissist that you love to hear their stories.

Chapter three when he gets back to his dorm and describes his discussions with “Ackley” and later “Stradlater” is classic. Lines like::

>!“He came down off the shower ledge and came into the room. “Hi” he said. “He always aid it like he was terrifically bored or terrifically tired”. Then he goes “How was the fencing?” “We win or what he said”. Then the Holden goes “Nobody won” then “Nobody won” he said “How come?”!<

>!“I left the Godamn foils and stuff on the subway”. I still didn’t look up at him. !<

The kind of give and take of kids with their embarrassment in how they speak is always present in the dialog in the Catcher.

But later biographical information that I’ve found on wikipedia seems to confirm that Salinger was a Narcissist. I can see why it gets banned by those who ban books. Holden is a sympathetic character. You can feel for him how in chapter three he had feelings for the girl Stradlatter had gone on a date that night. And that sense of injury, indeed stradlater pummeled him, seemed to lead to the rest of the story. But how much of it was his business versus the indulgence of a narcissist. Certainly it deserves to be in every library. What’s the value of it being in the classroom today as a taught book? And his writing is powerful. He captures the interplay of kids better than most anyone.

On the suggestion he is a Narcissist see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger#Last_publications_and_Maynard_relationship

"Salinger admitted that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical, explaining, "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book, and it was a great relief telling people about it" from wiki footnote 58