Phonies and other such sort of fancy hats

"What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

-- J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield


"This fall I think you're riding for -- it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started."

-- J.D. Salinger's Mr. Antolini, to Holden

"...you're going to start getting closer and closer -- that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it -- to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them -- if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."

-- J.D. Salinger's Mr. Antolini, to Holden


I am going to admit that I'm not as well-read in fiction as I am in fact or in poetry. I haven't always had the time to read large chunks of fiction on a regular basis, though I did read large amounts of literature for college as well as huge amounts of other materials. After taking care of Austin, going to school, working up to three jobs at a time, having then recovering from brain surgery, and finally opening the restaurant with Joe -- well it didn't leave me much time to do more than get a book in edgewise here and there. I've read a lot of the classics and a lot of philosophers, though not nearly as many as I should have by my age.

Lately I've been catching up and I can't believe how exciting it is, although at the same time I can remember that before Austin was born and I had only me to look out for, I'd stay up all night just to finish a book.

I finally read Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, the annotated version. I wish I'd read it a long time ago. No, don't bother with the movie. It skips too much. You have to read the book. You must, especially if you're female, read the book. Oh, please do.

I'd like also to recommend J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher In The Rye" if you haven't read it already. It's been on my stack of "books to read next" for the past year, but here's the thing: I don't know if I loved it for it's own sake, or if I loved it because of how well it tied in with the movie I watched Wednesday night: Chapter 27, "A film about Mark David Chapman in the days leading up to the infamous murder of Beatle John Lennon" (1) starring a pimply-faced, plumper-than-I'm-used-to-seeing Jared Ledo as David Chapman. After the movie I knew I had to read the book immediately. After which I said to myself, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck." And I felt kind of sick for a minute, thinking about John Lennon's death. Outside the context of the book, the movie isn't much more than a documentary. But within the context of the book, the movie is utterly creepy.

The book, published in 1951, "remains widely read; as of 2004, the novel was selling about 250,000 copies per year, with total worldwide sales over 65 million." (1) I wonder if it would have seemed as creepy a read had I not seen the movie before reading it. I'm certain I still would have loved the way Salinger handled the character's contradictory, digressive and progressively more and more depressing nature.

I'm not crazy, but mood swings, I know.

So I wondered, given his nature, how many people self-professed "yellow" Holden would have really kept from running off that cliff. Being the catcher in the rye, and ALL. And was he really in the shower during the incident? And what were the other 19 times? I love when a book makes me wonder about a character as if it were a person. And I love that great books, in general, remind me that I'm on the very end of time line -- the very end -- the next segment of which has yet to happen and so does not exist. And that we are all children, never knowing where the edge of the cliff is, where, the window.


(1) Wikipedia