Phonies Hurt Too…

I had every intention of writing a post about J.D. Salinger’s passing earlier, a little something about Catcher in the Rye…but it’s been years since I read it.  I remember being confused by Holden Caulfield’s railings against “phonies,” not altogether sure whom he meant.  Grown-ups as a whole, I suppose, and many of his peers.

All I can think in retrospect is that he was a young man with no understanding of why someone might find it necessary to have a public face as well as a private one.  It never seemed to occur to him to have one, so no doubt he felt raw and exposed.  But it’s a wonder he felt entitled to the most intimate selves of everyone, and felt gypped that he didn’t get it, especially considering the harshness of his judgments.

I wonder about Salinger, himself.  (Who doesn’t, even now that he’s gone?)  He seemed to have no public face either, by accident or design.  His solution was to withdraw.

A great portion of the world waits, hoping for more stories left behind by a man who insisted his fan mail be burned (see: J.D. Salinger, Literary Recluse, Dies at 91).  He didn’t seem to need the world.  Some portion of the world seems to need him, though, still.

True Believer

We’re all made of words. It’s how we construct ourselves. Everyone of us is made out of narrative and story. Try to answer the questions: “What did you do this morning?” “How was the game?” “Who are you really?” without telling a story. Granted, they aren’t always the best stories, but even the one word answer, “Fine!” can say volumes merely from the way it is inflected. Add past context and that “fine” can either uplift or break your heart to pieces.

Which leaves me here. Made of stories, trying to fabricate new ones. You can tell how well the battle is going by how much ink has been spilled. The same amount of blood on a good day would suggest I’d been murdered (or been murdering, brutally). Not so great, splotches like a nasty scrape. Usually on my fingers. These days, any amount is good.

I’m in love with story. All kinds: books (fiction and non-), comic books (fiction and non-), movies, television, animation, news, blogs). Act it out with stick figures, scrawl it in the sand, show me something marvelous. And then I have to tear myself away, or I won’t be able to make anything to show someone else. The slope, she is slippery.

Below, the quote that sustains me as a true believer:

“A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens–second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love or home, almost none in silence; the opposite of silence leads quickly to narrative, and the sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives, from the small accounts of our day’s events to the vast incommunicable constructs of psychopaths.”[1]

1. ^ Price, Reynolds (1978). A Palpable God, New York:Atheneum, p.3.

(courtesy Wikipedia)

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