Subject: Actually it was, "Sometimes I see me dead in the rain."
AStranger2@aol.com
Date: Fri Jun 21 2002 - 18:27:39 EDT
Valerie,
I knew I was in trouble as soon as my pinky hit the send button. It
dawned on me it wasn't Holden at all, but probably Buddy, or Franny. Through
my "skimming" I even went through "Teddy". Turns out the culprit is Zooey.
While lounging in a hot tub, he studies a manuscript:
Tina: ...I'm frightened. I'm a frightened child. (Looks out
window) I hate this rain. Sometimes I see me dead in it.
Rick (quietly): My darling, isn't that a line from "A Farewell to
Arms"?
All this while Bessie is constantly harrassing him to come into the
bathroom for just a minute so she can, obstensibly, grab something. Zooey
eventually relents, and later: "Jesus Christ almighty," he said. "Sometimes
I see me dead in the rain." Now, this may be more a comment on the
playwright than "Farewell", but as Midge pointed out in "Catcher", Holden
denounces "Farewell" and its protagonist as "phony". In the same breath he
says he is just "crazy" about "Gatsby". I mentioned this before, and the
story might be apocraphyl, but I read--don't ask me where--that Salinger was
disappointed with his first encounter with Hemingway when he saw Papa
shooting the heads off of live chickens. Whether this is true or not, I
don't see JDS's admiration for him in his works.
As far as one of your comments about JDS "turning his back" on
Judaism; I find that harsh. Just because one is born to a certain culture or
religious doctrine, I don't know if it's neccessarily spiritually incumbent
upon that person to follow suit. In his life he seems to relentlessly chase
all avenues of spirituality, and it seems, without much success. But one
also has to realize that, like many minorities in any country, he was making
an effort to assimilate so as to escape the various faces of discrimination.
(Woody Allen's "Zelig" is a great satire on the subject.) Or maybe the fact
that he was "half-Jewish" does play into it also, shunned by both worlds. He
does make some concessions--as with Bessie's cups of "consecrated chicken
soup."
On another note I was reading a "This Day in History" blurb and it
concerned John Hinckley Jr. It brought some strange recollections of all the
various misanthropes that have idolized Holden. Just to name a random few
others: Mark David Chapman and Gary Gilmore. I remember archiving a
"Playboy" interview with Gilmore and when asked what he would've liked to do
if he had had another chance, he mentioned catching children running from the
rye. I don't know if the interviewer simply ignored, or didn't understand
it, because he went right over it. What is it about "Catcher" and its
Rejection World premise that causes these types to reference it?
respectfully, robert
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