PRESENT DAY…
JEROME DAVID SALINGER, ALSO KNOWN AS J. D. Salinger, Born at New York City on the day of 1919 new year’s eve, established his own reputation on a basis of a single novel… the Catcher In The Rye, successfully published in 1915.
The principal character, Holden Caulfield epitomized the growing pains of a struggling and exhausted generation of high school and college students teenage rebellion. Originally published for adults, it has since become popular with adolescent readers for its themes of teenage angst, and alienation. It has been translated into almost all of the world’s major languages. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year with total sales of more than 65 million books. the novel was included in time’s 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English Language Novels of the 20th Century. It has been frequently challenged in the United States and other countries in the United States and other countries for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality. It also deals with complex issues of identity, belonging, connection, and alienation.
The majority of the novel takes place over two days in December 1949. Seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, the book’s narrator and protagonist, addresses the reader directly from a hospital in Southern California, recounting the events leading up to his breakdown the previous December.
Holden begins his story at Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania on the Saturday afternoon of the traditional football game with school rival, Saxon Hall. Holden misses the game. As manager of the fencing team, he managed to lose the team’s equipment on the subway in New York that morning, resulting in the cancellation of a match. He is on his way to the home of his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, to say good-bye. Holden has been expelled and is not to return after Christmas break, which starts the following Wednesday. Spencer is a well-meaning but long-winded old man. Much to Holden’s annoyance, he reads aloud his history examination paper, in which Holden wrote a note to Spencer so that his teacher would not feel badly about failing him in the subject.
Holden returns to his dorm, which is quiet because most of the students are still at the football game. Wearing his new red hunting cap, he begins a book, but his reverie is temporary. First, his dorm neighbor Ackley disturbs him, then later, he argues with his roommate, Stradlater, who fails to appreciate a composition that Holden wrote for him about Holden’s late brother Allie’s baseball glove. A womanizer, Stradlater has just returned from a date with Holden’s old friend Jane Gallagher. Holden is distressed because he is scared that Stradlater might have taken advantage of Jane. Stradlater does not appreciate Jane in the manner in which Holden does; he even misstates Jane’s name as ‘Jean.’ The two roommates fight, and Stradlater wins easily. Holden decides at this point that he has had enough of Pencey Prep, and catches a train to New York, where he plans to stay in a hotel until Wednesday, when his parents expect him to return home for Christmas vacation.
He checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. After observing the behavior of the “perverts” in the hotel room facing his, he struggles with his own sexuality. He states that although he has had opportunities to lose his virginity, the timing never felt right and he was always respectful when a girl said, ‘no.’ He spends an evening dancing with three tourist women in their thirties from Seattle in the hotel lounge, and enjoys dancing with one, but ends up with only the check. He finds it slightly frustrating because the women seem unable to carry a conversation. Following a disappointing visit to Ernie’s Nightclub in Greenwich Village, Holden agrees to have a prostitute, Sunny, visit his room. His attitude toward the girl changes the minute she enters the room, because she seems to be about the same age as Holden and he starts to view her as a person. Holden becomes uncomfortable with the situation, and when he tells her that all he wants to do is talk, she becomes annoyed and leaves. Even though he still pays her for her time, she returns with her pimp Maurice, and demands more money. Despite the fact that Sunny takes five dollars from Holden’s wallet, Maurice punches Holden in the stomach.
After a short sleep, Holden telephones Sally Hayes, a familiar date, and agrees to meet her that afternoon to go to a play. Meanwhile, Holden leaves the hotel, checks his luggage at Grand Central Station, and has a late breakfast. He meets two nuns, one an English teacher, with whom he discusses Romeo and Juliet. Holden shops for a special record, “Little Shirley Beans,” for his 10-year-old sister, Phoebe. He spots a small boy singing “if a body catch a body coming thru the rye”, which somehow makes him feel less depressed. After seeing the play with Sally featuring Broadway stars Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, the two go skating at Radio City, and while drinking Coke, Holden impulsively invites Sally to run away with him to the wilderness. She declines and her response deflates Holden’s mood, prompting his remark: “You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth.” He regrets it immediately, and Sally storms off as Holden follows, pleading with her to accept his apology. Finally, Holden gives up and leaves her there, sees the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall, endures a movie, and gets very drunk. Throughout the novel, Holden has been worried about the ducks in the lagoon at Central Park. He tries to find them but only manages to break Phoebe’s record in the process. Exhausted physically and mentally, he heads home to see his sister.
Holden’s time in the city is characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. He thinks about the Museum of Natural History, which he often visited as a child. He contrasts his evolving life with the statues of Eskimos in a diorama: while the statues have remained unchanged through the years, he and the world have not. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents’ apartment while they are out, to visit his younger sister—and close friend—Phoebe, the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns’ Comin Through The Rye) he pictures himself as the sole guardian of a group of children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if, in their abandon, they come close to falling off the brink, to be a “catcher in the rye.” Because of this misinterpretation, Holden believes that to be a “catcher in the rye” means to save children from losing their innocence.
When his parents come home, Holden slips out and seeks out his former and much-admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, who offers advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the mark of the mature man to live humbly for a cause, rather than die nobly for it. This is at odds with Holden’s ideas of becoming a “catcher in the rye,” symbolically saving children from the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of cocktails served in highball glasses. Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he regards as flitty. Confused and uncertain, he leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini’s actions was actually correct, and seems to wonder how much it matters anyway.
Holden makes the decision that he will head out west and live as a deaf-mute. When he mentions these plans to his little sister Monday morning, she wants to go with him. Holden declines her offer, which upsets Phoebe, so Holden decides not to leave after all. He tries to cheer her up by taking her to the central park zoo and as he watches her ride the zoo’s carousel, he is filled with happiness and joy at the sight of Phoebe riding in the rain. At the conclusion of the novel, Holden decides not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to “getting sick” and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he’ll be attending another school in September; he relates how he has been asked whether he will apply himself properly to his studies this time around and wonders whether such a question has any meaning before the fact. Holden says that he doesn’t want to tell us anything more, because surprisingly he found himself missing two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley, and even Maurice, the pimp who punched him. He warns the reader that telling others about their own experiences will lead them to miss the people who shared them.
In 1960 a teacher was fired for assigning the novel in class; he was later reinstated. Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. In 1981 it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States. According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990 to 1999. It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005 and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009. The challenges generally begin with Holden’s frequent use of vulgar language, with other reasons including sexual references, blasphemy, undermining of family values and moral codes, Holden’s being a poor role model, encouragement of rebellion, and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, and promiscuity. Often the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself. Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that the challengers “are being just like Holden… They are trying to be catchers in the rye.” A reverse effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there were none before.
Several shootings have been associated with the novel, including Robert John Bardo’s shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley, Jr.’s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Following Mark David Chapman’s shooting of John Lennon, Chapman was arrested with his worn personal copy of the book, inside which he had scribbled, “Dear Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement”.
In 2009 Salinger successfully sued to stop the U.S. publication of a novel that presents Holden Caulfield as an old man. The novel’s author, Fredrik Colting, commented, “Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.” The issue is complicated by the nature of Colting’s book, 60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye, which has been compared to fan fiction. Although commonly not authorized by writers, no legal action is usually taken against fan fiction since it is rarely published commercially and thus involves no profit. Colting, however, has published his book commercially.
Unauthorized fan fiction on The Catcher in the Rye existed on the Internet for years without any legal action taken by Salinger before his death.
Before that, Salinger had released only a few short stories and novelettes, one of those “A Perfect Day Of Bananafish” which appeared in the New Yorker in 1949. Since then, it introduces the readers to the Glass Family, who subsequently figured in Franny and Zooey which came out in 1961, and in Raise High The Roof Beam, Canpenters And Saymour; An Introduction (1963), then published in a single volume.
Those which Salinger wishes to preserve are collected in Nine Stories, released in 1953, of his 35 published books are included… and 32 of those created by his senior, are being kept in quarters inside the rusky Armadio della Vergogna in which Wichita gave me as a behindhand present for my 17th birthday. It’s a wooden cabinet discovered in 1994 inside a large storage room in Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi, Rome which, at the time, housed the chancellery of the military attorney’s office. The cabinet contained an archive of 695 files documenting war crimes perpetrated on Italian soil under fascist rule and during Nazi occupation after the September 8, 1943 armistice between the allied forces and the Italian troops. The actions described in the records spanned several years and took place in various areas of the country, from the southern city of Acerra to the northern province of Trieste and as far east as the Balkans; it remains unclear, to this day, how the archive remained concealed for so long, and who gave the order to hide the files in the immediate post-war period.
And like what those taken and acquired by the Wilkinson Brothers, those had been paid off… thanks to those, I have my Galaxy S3 right now in my hands. Speaking of my begrimed hands, in heretofore, I’ve already coached to culminate the whole book.
This is all I want right? up until now, I still annexed those batching and devolving feelings of bitter pill.
Outside chance of Salinger, Raphael are unable to prepare for the worse. Because some of the committed letters of Nathan to my cousin was being held by the Joker himself. Igniting with rage of possibilities, a clown with big red smile of a slippy- flitty lipstick wont snoop around and keep the letters inside the fireplace. Most likely, the ring master would send it to Salerno, drink a draught of wine from Campania and compass a sun tan in one of the beautiful beaches of Capri.
And perhaps sleep outside the garden. A garden which is owned by my lackadaisical cousin.
the Joker looked down in his hands, it was full of dirt and dark ashes. Sunderly wound, this is the time for a new pair of white Turino gloves.
SIX MONTHS AGO…
AFTER RETIRING FROM’A SHORT LIVED CAREER AS AN IRON WORKER IN WISCONSIN, Stephen and his brother Aidan went south to become winter Alabaman. They joined thousands and hundreds of other OAP’s, concubinage travel packers and others seeking the path of the gold rush in the Mediterranean climate of Graceland- Appalachian area.
They enjoyed fishing at the SwanLake, deer hunting and other activities provided by the good weather. After several snowing, Aidan and Stephen noticed the owners of large gardens that after harvesting their produce, they were plowing under a lot of leftover vegetables. Aidan, convinced the local social service organizations that there was a potential no cost food supply available for needy persons by picking the leavings. He proposed that some of his friends in the BeachwoodHigh School will provide the labor.
Growers worried about liability claims if the younger volunteers will be injured. Aidan averred to personally supervise the project in the fields to minimized problems. Howbeit enough, workers carry long sharp knives for the feat and as the outline goes by, it has been a tremendous failure. There had been circumstances beyond one’s control.
At the time that, Jennifer Body lost her left hand. She cuts herself while gleaning some lady fingers to harvest. As her brothers family is now a close knit, their togetherness is no ifs and’s or buts like a Virginia Mock. They even go places together- even one car is in the shop.
He regretted hitching up our late father’s trailer, in the act of the half half of Rio Grande’s flood taken the towers elder Center and the Colonias del Valle, it made him realize that picking is fun… Making the whimper kids a nearby attraction. But for the information that someone is hating you, made me miss my old self- when kids grow up and leave the nest to face the world’s hard clip, some parents weep and wish they’d stay.
While others change the locks.
BECAUSE CHAMOMILE AND I took painting lessons last week, our campaign for the class presidency will be done early this year. Every person on our list will get something hand painted, dated and signed.
At the first class of oil painting for Dadaism beginners, the teacher placed a bouquet of wild flowers on a desk and we painted them on canvas. It was obvious that Chamomile was quite talented; her bluebonnets looked real enough to touch. Mine we’re little blobs of blue paint. The petals on her white daisies almost moved by the wind, mine resembled circle of shiny white teeth on a long stem.
I appreciated Chamomile’s silence regarding my artistic talent. I had a lot to learn about oil painting. And I was determined to master it. I wasn’t discouraged however, and envisioned Monet’s beautiful scenes on October’s kitchen calendar. I visited the Birmingham Museum of Art and studied the masters. First from a distance, then up close, trying to learn how they achieved the effect. I read the life of van Gogh and bought a poster created by Toulouse-Lautrec. No doubt about it. I am really into art.
Meanwhile, Chamomile kept on finishing the wild flowers and started working the azalea bush across the street in preparation for our next class when Maro came to our class room. “What? A 160 kilometer ride down here at Birmingham. What came to your senses Maro?”
“Dude, you should come to me right now. Timothy needs the four of us.” Maro paused for a while, and then continued. “He almost got the black bag.”
“The Wilkinson Brothers, why?” Chamomile turned from painting at her canvas. “Hey faggot! My man first have to do me and this shaggy brown haired dog to reproduce in his plaintext so if you’re planning for an argy, forget it, because Anselm is busy in his painting craft. Understand that gay astro boy.”
“What is your problemo bitch daughter of John Lennon? Why are you so stubborn at the boys?”
Chamomile’s rendition of the dog was outstanding and looked younger and more alert than the actual model. My artwork was barely distinguishable from’a rag. In fact, my picture looked like a rug with two large, yellow eyes. But, after al’, it was only my second lesson. I wasn’t ready to give up. I remembered the struggles of van Gogh. And after seeing what the Wilkinson Brother’s can do to chamomile and her temper, even though its affronting inside, now that Chamomile and I was commissioned to each other, I’ve decided to become a modern artist and my work didn’t have to resemble anything specifically- which it didn’t. “Maro, I think you should leave us alone. Thank you for the visit but please dear friend, bro, go back to Graceland up north.” I made a sigh. “I’m tired of all about this shit.” I said in a separate, stronger tone.
Maro, blank staring, shook his head and bang-shut the door when he went away.
The following weeks produced startling results for Chamomile. She finished the picture of a dog and a beautiful profile of our classmate Wichita, accenting her pretty face and ignoring her double chin. Her boyfriend Keegan later bought it for ten dollars.
The seascape chamomile painted at lesson number five was nice enough to hang in her apartment in Birmingham. That is, after I removed someone’s versions of Custer’s last stand to make a room for it.
After seeing the seascape, her best friend Maui asked my girlfriend to do an interior scene for her. She likes old things and wanted antiques such as the spinning wheels in it. She didn’t ask me to do a thing since I was a modern painter.
When I thought everything had changed and I was blithely enjoys the company of this sexy girls and helping to move the stuff’s of Maui’s apartment loft in Graceland to hang a Juan Luna painting. When it suddenly, my hands, went shaking.
As I felt pain in my stomach and rolled down the wooden staircase.
The last thing I saw before I faint are my hands- glowing in the dark and blinking like a yellow stoplight.
I THINK IT WAS MY FIFTH TIME I woke up in a white room full of hot nurses in alabaster silk uniforms. Graceland General Hospital already seems a second home. That is, when Kaycee entered my wad and took my vital signs.
“How’s my patient?” She made a weird, gleemy sight… which is a normal of her.
“Ah, I’m fine. I’ve just thrown from the third floor of a house down to basement.” I said in exaggeration.
Kaycee, made a freak laugh. “What I mean is, about this.” She then put her ball point in her chest.
“I’m already okay Kaycee, you should bother your boyfriend Jeremias… which is my younger brother… and that’s weird. Why don’t you find a guy who’s more of your age?” I said, chidingly.
She made a smirk and checked my blood pressure. “110 over 120. What is the last thing that you ate?”
“Fried chicken from McDonalds? You are freaking weird of a cougar Kaycee!”
“I’m just being a nurse. Besides, I know Jeremias can take care of himself.”
“Too much for a guy who died once.”
Kaycee momentarily halts writing on her blue book and spaciously glares, made me opine that I was about to get jostled. “Don’t push the people who loves you away.” She wrote down something in a piece of sticky pad, and furtively hanged it on my nose.
“What is this? Our secret theist hideout?”
“Maro told me to knack you to go to that address. Your friends needs you
Anselm.” Kaycee turned around before she can open the door of my hospital ward. “Do you miss your mom Anselm?”
“Nope, for goodness sake, Felicity tried to kill me.”
“Your real mom.”
I deemed for a second, surmising that this is a trick question. “I never met that woman Kaycee, I would never know.”
“What if I tell you that I know where she is? Would you take the bait?”
Stemming from her seven last words, I’m now certainly sure that this is a trick question. “Forget it Kaycee!”
What if she really knows where my mother is?
IN THE DUNGEON OF THE HORTALEZA CASTLE SOMEWHERE IN THE BLACK FOREST IN BAVARIA, A SLEEPING BEAUTY WAS ABOUT TO WAKE UP.
“Belle, you have a visitor.” A blonde Vestal Virgin said, opening the locks on the cage of Belle Canto. A tall guy who wears a black hood entered… iced, and just looking at the pair of chains in her hands and feet.
Belle, put on a happy expression… ever hard even she had wounds in her lips and on its sides. She crawls, expressing tenderness and takes in one’s arm the legs of the man who slant close to her. “My son, you came here to save me. You never know how I’ve dreamed of this moment to come Anselm.”
“IT IS NOT ANSELM, BELLE… IT’S TRISTAN, THE OTHER SON THAT YOU’VE LET DYING IN THE FIRE IN YOUR CRAIG’S HOUSE.”
NEXT CHAPTER… Episode 29: Two Catholics.
