 In a contributor 's note Salinger gave to Harper 's Magazine in 1946 , he wrote : " I almost always write about very young people " , a statement that has been referred to as his credo . Adolescents are featured or appear in all of Salinger 's work , from his first published short story , " The Young Folks " ( 1940 ) , to The Catcher in the Rye and his Glass family stories . In 1961 , the critic Alfred Kazin explained that Salinger 's choice of teenagers as a subject matter was one reason for his appeal to young readers , but another was " a consciousness [ among youths ] that he speaks for them and virtually to them , in a language that is peculiarly honest and their own , with a vision of things that capture their most secret judgments of the world . " For this reason , Norman Mailer once remarked that Salinger was " the greatest mind ever to stay in prep school " . Salinger 's language , especially his energetic , realistically sparse dialogue , was revolutionary at the time his first stories were published and was seen by several critics as " the most distinguishing thing " about his work . 
