Thankyou. I genuinely appreciate the encouragement and the 'brutal' honesty - acts of mindless brutality and senseless honesty - more where that came from please. It's funny because every single post addressed a different problem I was concerned with. I think that I've pretty much got the low-down on the lowly profession now - as much as you can get without actually becoming a part of it. Profession or Disease? I wake up every morning with a pain in my chest - but does it have to mean I'm a writer - couldn't it be indigestion, Clinical Depression, Puberty Blues or the possibility that I was silently stabbed during the night? Maybe it was something metaphysical I ate the night before. By the time I see them goddam bananas they're already burning their way down my throat. My only knowledge of Leonard Cohen is 'Waiting for the Miracle' from the NBK soundtrack, which is the only contact you could expect for a teenager. I looked him up on the net last year. Very Interesting. When you've fallen on the highway and you're lying in the rain, and they ask you how you're doing of course you'll say you can't complain -- If you're squeezed for information, that's when you've got to play it dumb: You just say you're out there waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come. Could somebody please tell me a nice little honest something about Ulysses that will make me read it? I mean, what is it, too? Also, anything you say means a great deal to me because of your fellow honorary bananafishship, so I would appreciate it if you would recommend to me some tangible Classics that are necessary for the redemption, guidance (or acceptance?) of a troubled youth. Preferably ones that I can buy. I have this dream, not the literal sleep-related ones, and not one of those NBA 'I believe I can fly' dreams where you can actually put on some wings and take a jump. I'm talking about the dream that isn't a hope, isn't really a posibility and isn't really a dream. Salinger arrives at our Bananafish post, with a single anecdote and it's the miracle we're waiting for and not unlike the U2 'wake up dead man', and now I've made an unforgiveable and incorrectable(?) comparison between Jesus Christ and Salinger. But that's the way I see it. In a world as inexplicably world-like as ours, J.D. is as much a Role Model Messiah as any other. But maybe there's nothing left for him to say....maybe he said all he ever wanted to say in the handful of novels that brought us here. Maybe. 'Wake up Dead Man?' The man, he can never Die - he's the one that has, and will continue to, awake the dead men. I know this question is like saying 'What was wrong with Holden anyway?' or 'Was Hamlet genuinely crazy?' but I'll ask anyway, 'Why did Seymour do it? - the fall in Room 507? From Teddy's point of view, what would he say? Teddy wouldn't have done it. How would Seymour have explained it? Couldn't he just hold on? Say it ain't so. Godot.