On the first page of The Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield announces:
If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.
Holden Caulfield was one of the few people I’d ever heard of who hated the movies. He despises the fact that his brother D.B. is out screenwriting in Hollywood, ‘being a prostitute’. But later he does recall this story of going to the movies with his sister Phoebe:
I mean if you tell old Phoebe something she knows exactly what the hell you’re talking about. I mean you can even take her anywhere with you. If you take her to a lousy movie, for instance, she knows it’s a lousy movie. If you take her to a pretty good movie, she knows it’s a pretty good movie. D.B. and I took her to see this French movie, The Baker’s Wife, with Raimu in it. It killed her. Her favourite is The 39 Steps, though, with Robert Donat. She knows the whole goddamn movie by heart, because I’ve taken her to see it about ten times. When old Donat comes up from this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he’s running away from the cops and all, Pheobe’ll say right out loud in the movie – right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it – ‘Can you eat the herring?’ She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that really jolly German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Pheobe beats him to it – she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face.
R.I.P. J.D. Salinger. January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010.
The Classic Film Show 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 29, 2010 at 12:13 am
Invisible Mikey
Great selection, and proof that even though Caulfield didn’t like the movies, his creator obviously did, and had good taste in them too. It took me a long time to understand why Salinger didn’t want to be famous. I finally learned that getting a little fame is like getting a little heroin. It may feel good while it helps you sell product, but it also distorts your life and makes it unreal. Nobody liked having an ordinary life more than Salinger, for whom the bizarreness of normalcy provided the depth and beauty of his work.
Reading not only “Catcher”, but also “9 Stories” and “Franny and Zooey” were some of the happiest hours I’ve ever spent.
(I posted about old lady talk, being invisible, and going with the flow.)
September 27, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Ros
Holden hated all the crap he had to watch with his stupid girlfriends. He doesn’t seem to hate the 39 steps, nor the baker’s wife (even if he doesn’t love them). I think he may have been able to find some movies he liked had he been provided with a wider variety of (possibly more obscure) options. It must’ve really sucked to be a kid in the 50s.