Dick Whitman
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 1, 2009
- Messages
- 45,703
Maybe we can make this a thing. We did it a few years ago with "Gatsby" and a couple others.
I picked this up this week to read for the first time since I was a teen-ager perhaps. It's a cliche to say that you relate to Holden Caulfield, but I remember reading it and almost having to put it down every page because it left me breathless. Almost everything I find talks about how it captures "teen-age alienation," and I guess that's kind of true. But, fork, the guy makes me tear up on almost every page, still, at age 40. Not because he's alienated. But because he feels so deeply, I think. (But pretends not to.) I didn't relate to alienation, necessarily, though I did and still do find it a revelation to hear someone raging about "phonies."
Anyway, I'll post some passages I come across as time goes on, but here is one in particular, along with some background. My dad was kind of a hard dad, demanding. Worked his ass off. But anyway, one night he came home from work and, out of the blue, gave me a "Star Wars" Ewok action figure. That was definitely not his style. Thing was, I already had it. I never told him that. To this day, I get choked up thinking about it, this $1.99, moot act of kindness. I really do. Anyway, I don't know exactly what Holden meant here, but I feel the same way he does a lot of times, for various reasons. I mean it.
One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy [sic] questions—and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates—I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey—but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
So ... let's keep talking about it. (The book, not that particular passage.)
I picked this up this week to read for the first time since I was a teen-ager perhaps. It's a cliche to say that you relate to Holden Caulfield, but I remember reading it and almost having to put it down every page because it left me breathless. Almost everything I find talks about how it captures "teen-age alienation," and I guess that's kind of true. But, fork, the guy makes me tear up on almost every page, still, at age 40. Not because he's alienated. But because he feels so deeply, I think. (But pretends not to.) I didn't relate to alienation, necessarily, though I did and still do find it a revelation to hear someone raging about "phonies."
Anyway, I'll post some passages I come across as time goes on, but here is one in particular, along with some background. My dad was kind of a hard dad, demanding. Worked his ass off. But anyway, one night he came home from work and, out of the blue, gave me a "Star Wars" Ewok action figure. That was definitely not his style. Thing was, I already had it. I never told him that. To this day, I get choked up thinking about it, this $1.99, moot act of kindness. I really do. Anyway, I don't know exactly what Holden meant here, but I feel the same way he does a lot of times, for various reasons. I mean it.
One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding's and asking the salesman a million dopy [sic] questions—and here I was getting the ax again. It made me feel pretty sad. She bought me the wrong kind of skates—I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey—but it made me sad anyway. Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad.
So ... let's keep talking about it. (The book, not that particular passage.)
