Subject: Humor in CITR (was Re: telephony)
From: Suzanne Morine (suzannem@dimensional.com)
Date: Sun Apr 01 2001 - 21:06:13 GMT
At 06:00 PM 3/31/2001 -0500, Jive Monkey wrote:
>I've never found Holden funny, personally. I laugh like a hyena whenever
>I read "Roofbeam," but if there's a great deal of humor in "Catcher" then
>it's lost on me. That kid is suicidal for christ's sake!
I mainly laugh reading Catcher. For one thing, I love Holden's sense of
humor. It balances the alienation and troubles, including his own
struggle, in a way that feels just right for me. I know I always laugh
when he hears the two guys unloading the Christmas tree ("Hold the
sonovabitch UP! Hold it UP for Chrissake!"). He writes, "It certainly was a
gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree."
There are also little amusements of recognition of things from real life
that he captures (yet not having the problem I find in the Glass books of
getting mired in too many teeny tiny details). Holden complains that the
cabbie kept braking when he and Sally tried to kiss in the cab. I mean, I
think that cabbie was trying to get the kids to cool off their ardor. Or,
another example, when Phoebe, having been angry with Holden, suddenly sits
up and tells him about her progress in kiddie belching lessons. Kids are
great/funny like that. Also the way she lies to her mother that she took
one puff of a cigarette (explaining Holden's smoke) and also how he could
tell she was just trying to get their mother to leave.
There are also the funny ideas Holden has, like that the ducks might get
picked up by some guy in a truck. Another is his idea that the "fuck you"
signs in Phoebe's school are from sleazy old guys who sneak in after hours
to take a pee and write on the walls just to freak out the little kids. I'm
sure the perpetrators are boys who are getting sleazy and prematurely nasty
at the age of, say, nine. And he thinks the duck pond becomes a solid block
of ice.
(And Horwitz's idea that the fish are alive but frozen solid, passively
getting nutrition from the surrounding ice, through their pores. That is so
like an urban legend.)
I definitely appreciate the way Holden never gets depressed for long, or at
any rate is at least still able to wryly and accurately remark on the very
forces bringing him down. "I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me
in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say 'Holden Caulfield'
on it [..] it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive, in fact." I can't say I
laugh at that, no. But I am touched and appreciative of it, SMILING.
>Finally, while no one may ever be truly "unphony" without being on the
>brink of Nirvana, that doesn't somehow grant a pardon to all the phonies
>in the world.
I agree.
Suzanne
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