Six Degrees Of Separation Page #5

What a good idea.

That means there's more for us.

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- It's a treat to eat at home.

- We go out every night.

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I have to. Business.

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Have you declared your major yet?

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You are like all parents -

"What's your major?"

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Geoffrey, Harvard has all those great titles

the students give the courses.

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"The holocaust and ethics"?

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"Krauts and doubts."

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A toast. To you.

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Oh. No, no, no.

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- To iCats./i

- OK. Yes. To iCats./i

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Isn't this the finest time?

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Hello?

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Hello?

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Hello?

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- Seconds?

- Ah!

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Blunt question. What's he like?

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- Oh, let's not be star-f***ers.

- I'm not a star-f***er.

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Well... you know my father. He's... perfect.

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So confident and in control.

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And I used to wonder how could

I ever possibly live up to him.

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And then one night, when I was 16 -

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we were at the Cannes Film Festival,

of all places -

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I looked up and said to him:

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"Wow, Dad, this is all so easy for you."

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Why did I say that?

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He sat me down and set me straight.

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Actually, it was a relief for me

to know my father was no superman.

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That he has problems. And there are

moments in his life when he's scared.

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And, yes, sometimes

life is whipping his tail.

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And he doesn't feel like he can get

through the day. That's refreshing for me.

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Because I have times like that myself.

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I just loved the kid so much.

I wanted to reach out to him.

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Then we asked him

what his thesis was on.

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- The one that was stolen.

- Well...

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A teacher out on Long Island was dropped

from his job for fighting with a student.

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Weeks later, he returned to the classroom,

shot the student - unsuccessfully,

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held the class hostage,

and then shot himself - successfully.

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This fact caught my eye.

Last sentence, iTimes/i -

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"A neighbour described

the teacher as a nice boy,

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always reading iCatcher in the Rye. "/i

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This nitwit Chapman,

who shot John Lennon,

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said he did it to draw the attention

of the world to iCatcher in the Rye,/i

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and the reading of this book

would be his defence.

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Young Hinckley, the whiz kid who shot

Reagan and his press secretary, said:

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"If you want my defence, all you

have to do is read... iCatcher in the Rye. "/i

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- I haven't read it in years.

- Shh.

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I borrowed a copy from a young friend.

I wanted to see what she had underlined.

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And I read this book to find out why

this touching, beautiful, sensitive story,

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published in July 1951,

had turned into this manifesto of hate.

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I started reading. It's exactly as I had

remembered. Everybody's a phoney.

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Page two - "My brother's

in Hollywood being a prostitute."

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Page three -

"What a phoney slob his father was."

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Page nine -

"People never notice anything."

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Then, on page 22, my hair stood up.

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Well...

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Remember Holden Caulfield, the definitive

sensitive youth wearing his hunter's cap?

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A deer hunter's cap?

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"Like hell it is. I sort of closed one eye

like I was taking aim at it."

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"This is a people shooting hat."

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"I shoot people in this hat."

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This book is preparing people for bigger

moments than I had ever dreamed of.

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Then, on page 89,

"I'd rather push a guy out the window

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or chop his head off with an axe

than sock him in the jaw."

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"I hate fistfights. What scares

me most is the other guy's face."

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I finished the book.

It's touching and comic.

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The boy wants to do so much

and can't do anything.

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Hates all phoniness

and only lies to others.

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Wants everyone to like him but is only

hateful and is completely self involved.

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In other words, a pretty accurate

picture of a male adolescent.

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What alarms me about the book - not the

book so much as the aura about it - is this.

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The book is primarily about paralysis.

The boy can't function.

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At the end, before he can run away and

start a new life, it starts to rain. He folds.

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There's nothing wrong in writing about

emotional and intellectual paralysis.

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It may, thanks to Chekhov and Samuel

Beckett, be the great modern theme.

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The extraordinary last lines

of iWaiting for Godot.:/i

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"Let's go."

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"Yes."

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"Let's go."

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Stage directions:

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"They do not move."

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The aura around Salinger's book -

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which, perhaps, should be

read by everyone but young men - is this.

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