Salinger's Secrets, Part Two

I'll try to keep this short, because I can't stand phoney people who just talk and talk about things. And you have to sit there and listen or else they will think you are a jerk. I mean, that just kills me and all. Anyway, school started again a couple weeks ago, and all the reading is just so goddamn depressing. And my roommate, Stradlater, is just so oversexed and all he talks about is necking girls until I just can't stand it and have to go somewhere else. So I went to the bookstore to see if they have any books that aren't so depressing, and I saw this book by Magaret Salinger called Dream Catcher, although in the book she says she likes to be called Peggy. Anyway, so I thought the title sounded nice enough. And I thought it might make me feel a little better about school and Stradlater. I had a feeling that it was not a book that my older brother Allie would read, because he could always spot a phoney from a mile away when he was still alive, but I read it just because I do things like that sometimes, ya know.

So I read the book, and boy was I disappointed. Well, I read most of it, ya know--it was four hundred pages, so I skimmed past some of the boring parts. It was just too long, this book. Gets kind of monotonous. I guess I just don't want anybody else to have to read Dream Catcher, so I wrote this review to warn people not to make the mistake I made. It's not like I'm telling people not to read it at all. I mean, it offers some really interesting facts about this guy, J.D. Salinger. But it's the author of the book, his daughter Margaret, who is just too depressing and boring. It just kills me how she tries to sound all smart and objective and grown up, when she really just sounds like an adult who isn't really an adult, just stuck in the past. Anyway, so I guess J.D. wrote some important book 50 years ago, and then decided he wanted to just live away from people in the woods of New Hampshire. I mean, I think that sounds pretty good, not having to deal with people every day and all their phoniness. If I lived in the woods, then I wouldn't even have to see all those goddamn depressing people all the time. But then the daughter, whose name is Margaret, has to go and ruin everything by writing this book about all the strange things her dad did.

So the press made a big deal about the way this author chose to live his life. That just kills me, because I just wish I could be this guy. The author, J.D., is really old now, something like 80 years old, and lives with his third wife, a nurse who is only 30. Peggy says he had some very strange habits, like drinking his own urine, which sounds really gross but is actually just part of some self-cleansing ritual, and she says he practiced Christian Science, Scientology and homeopathy, which is fine with me as long as he doesn't try to get me involved. Also he abstained from sex with Margaret's mother because of the advice of some Indian mystic. And I think that's pretty good advice because being oversexed just makes someone into a jerk like my roommate Stradlater. Speaking of Stradlater, all these stories sounded so interesting so I told my roommate about them and all. And he just made me feel so stupid when he said that a lot of these crazy stories had already been told in another book called At Home in the World by Joyce Maynard, who dated J.D. when he was around 30 and she was only a teenager.

Well, in Margaret's version, she always sounds like she is just complaining about how he was not a good enough father. I mean, yeah, she tries to make it all sound nice, and says she does not want to blame her dad for much, but then she goes on and on about how crazy she was and how her father didn't help. Ya know, I just hate phoney people, and Margaret just seems to be phoney about everything. She always talks about high school and middle school and her babysitters, and how damaging her father was to her mind. On and on she goes. She says her growing-up was filled with bulimia, panic attacks, chronic fatigue and depression. I feel really bad for her, really, I mean it. I know how she feels to have things just depress you for no goddamn reason. But J.D. doesn't sound like that bad of a guy. Fights his own demons, of course, but he was never negligent, just detached like all adults. There are far worse parents in the world that this guy, but Margaret never seems to realize that J.D. was kinda doing the best he could, ya know, being an adult and all.

Anyway, Margaret should know that you can't trust adults with anything. You just can't. The only person I trust is my little sister Phoebe. Ya know, you can't rely upon goddamn adults to help you when you need it the most. They're just a depressing bunch, and it just kills me to think that I'd ever be like them. You see, that's what I think Margaret worries about, becoming like her father. But she managed to find a good husband, graduate from Harvard Divinity School and raise her son pretty good so far, although she never seems to talk about these good things, only the bad memories from her past. Not a bad life, I think, if she wasn't always so phoney and false and depressing when she acts like she doesn't blame father for her depression when she really does. She should just move on with her life, and stop whining so goddamn much to all of us. I mean, Margaret, it's never to late too catch the children in the rye field before they fall off the crazy cliff, even if J.D. certainly wasn't around to catch you. That reminds me, I have to go bring Phoebe to the park.

DREAM CATCHER

by

Margaret Salinger

Washington Square

400 pp., $28

by

Margaret Salinger

Washington Square

400 pp., $28