Re: Hello, and a small request
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Sun, 04 Jan 1998 12:39:10 -0500
Welcome to the list, Matthew!
> Now to my request, there is one quote in the Catcher in the Rye that I
> kindly ask someone to send to me. In truth, I only want to read the
> sentance or two that it is to my girlfriend because I feel that it is one
> of the best quotes about teenage romance I've ever read.
>
> The quote that I want is when Holden discusses what it was like holding
> hands with Sally. About how they would just hold hands for hours and it
> didn't matter if they were sweaty or not etc...
It follows, below.
> Being as I only subscribed 10 minutes ago, I have not recieved any messages
> so don't know if "substantial passages" means "all quotes" or "quotes over
> 3 sentances" or whatever the policy is.
Welcome to the American legal system! After a lawsuit by Salinger against
Random House and Ian Hamilton (who wrote a book about Salinger and quoted
from unpublished material), people are leery of quoting him too heavily.
His literary agents have also been aggressive about forcing people to
remove quotes from places they may appear online. So, it's not easy to
define "substantial"; we try to err on the side of caution. I regret that
we can't say something objective, like: "not more than 250 words" and leave
it at that.
> So if it is against the rules,
> then simply don't send the quote! It's not worth being thrown off of what
> seems to be a wonderful discussion group of the works of a man quickly
> becoming my favorite author. If you can, then I just ask what page the
> quote can be found on, I'll make a trip to my local library and look it up
> myself.
The one thing you might want to do is find a used paperback copy of the
book and keep it handy, the way you might keep a bottle of aspirin at
hand.... It works for me.
> Thanks alot, I hope I have not overfilled my first (hopefully of many)
> message to this list.
No way! Please continue to speak up. The only limit we have to live with
here is that the maximum size of a message (because some of our subscribers
are unable to receive messages that exceed a certain size) is 32,000 words.
Given that "Moby Dick" is roughly 500,000 words, you can see that this
leaves you a lot of leeway.
My copy at hand is the Modern Library edition, so the pagination may differ
from other editions. On page 103, Holden explains that Jane Gallagher is
no "*icicle*" and says, by way of explanation, "she was terrific to hold
hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand
*dies* on you, or else they think they have to keep *moving* their hand all
the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something." He
continues, "We'd get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we'd
start holding hands, and we wouldn't quit till the movie was over. And
without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never
even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew
was, you were happy. You really were."
I hope that's what you were looking for, but if it isn't, please get a copy
of the book and find the passage you want. I find that when I do things
like this (searching through the text for a specific line), it takes me
forever, because I hit scenes I love to reread, and I get a little ...
distracted.
In particular, the part that makes this quote so wonderful is how Holden
really turns the camera on *the reader*: "... you were happy. You really
were." It's a terrific way of pulling you right into the story.
I hope this helps! And again, welcome; we look forward to your
contributions to the conversation.
--tim