August 28, 2001
whew! i read a book today! this is unprecedented! The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. a number of people had told me that i remind them of Holden Caulfield, so i thought i’d better get a handle on just who this chap is. and i can’t say they were wrong — the dude does does kinda remind me of me. but probably the bad qualities of mine, notably my misanthropy (which i’m gradually losing, i think), moodiness (also hopefully going away), and problems with women (this bugger seems to be here to stay, heh).
yeah, so in particular i have to quote this one passage. in the words of Holden Caulfield, “it killed me”…
Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn’t mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way … The thing is, though, I don’t like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all … It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Girls aren’t too much help, either, when you start trying not to get too crumby, when you start trying not to spoil anything really good. I knew this one girl, a couple of years ago, that was even crumbier than I was. Boy, was she crumby!
[p.62; Little, Brown, and Company May 1991 paperback edition]
And if you’re interested, maybe you want to take a look at Exploring Catcher in the Rye. I read a tiny bit of what other people on the net think of this book, and many seemed to be complaining about how it’s cliche teen angst bullshit. I say: oh well! If nothing else, the book is really good at making you get to know Caulfield, and I think that character development is pretty much the most improtant thing in fiction. So umm, yeah.