We’ve all read about little Holden Caulfield at one point or another. When we learned that J.D. Salinger passed away a few weeks ago, I wonder if you slipped back into a memory of a slower time, when it was quite alright to be all alone for a while…as long as you had a great story in your hands.
Here - A Little Note from my friend, Patrick Donahue:
For more about Patrick - visit Patrick Donahue on Facebook
Little Shirley Beans
When I first met Holden I was in no condition to meet anyone, at least for the first time. They pave the initial stones of the road for that relationship. They create a new frame of thought in your mind designed to turn the wheels of judgment, interaction and compassion. I had just recently lost god along with all my faith. Organized religion was completely dismissed from my life. I was on a search for my identity, my purpose, all that jazz, a search which has become life long. But most importantly my innocence, or at least what remained of it, the purest portion of it, was stripped against my will. And I was depressed. All day, every day, behind my smiles, behind my words. Depression. At night I slept unsoundly, those short hours, my only escapes from reality, scarred. My mind was a swirling clusterfuck. My goals in life were often clouded with thoughts of suicide. And then I met Holden. And Pheobe. And Ackley kid. And the rest of the gang. They didn’t save me. By no means was this a self help book. With every sentence read I sunk deeper and deeper. But the pages coddled me, kept me warm on the coldest of days. I wasn’t alone down there. They allowed me to live in my mind, and in the book. My views on people and of the world fell perfectly in line with Holden’s. There was no need to interact with anyone.
The book became an extension of my body. Train rides, car rides, auditions, castings. I replaced waiting with reading. It allowed me to disappear as I sat in hallways waiting to be hit on by some pedophile designer who would fall in love with me and then tell me I wasn’t right for the gig because I didn’t return his sexual pass. While the other models compared portfolios and passionately chewed the fat about their awful, superficial lives, I walked through the museum with Holden and Phoebe and marveled at the Eskimo who was still ice fishing. I watched phonies smoke during intermission and praise The Lunts. I ran without knowing why I was running. [Read more →]
The annual Brooklyn Book Festival is happening this Sunday, the 12th at Jay Street and Borough Hall. The funny thing about Brooklyn is that it has a large population of book authors. I say this is due to the fact that people in Brooklyn are really spacey and imaginative, and love to sit in coffee shops and write things on their macs.
