Holden’s hunter’s cap haunts me as a lasting symbol of American literature as few others do. At once evocative of the hunt—of searching—and an insulation against the world, Holden’s defining sartorial article works nicely as a metaphor to be mined by high school English students in sophomore term papers year after year. But as nexus between the “very corny” trappings of life and the way we occasionally can’t help but fall for them ourselves, it also serves as a perfect reflection of the place Catcher in the Rye has staked out in the canon.