The Catcher in the Rye

 Catcher in the Rye is the best choice for All-American novel. I say this because in the age of low attention spans and low interest in books, JD Salinger wrote a book that actually makes you want to read it, no offense to any of the other candidates out there, most of which are so long-riding and look so daunting that people can't and won't set aside time to actually read it. Moby Dick, by all accounts, requires a handbook of all the different Bible allegories that are within its dense chapters, not to mention all the intricate industry-specific knowledge about whaling that Melville accumulated in his time on a whaling boat; East of Eden has that one basic retelling of the story of Abel and Cane, but its winding tale through the Monterrey region makes it just a tad inaccessible. Because there's so many things I haven't read that I want to get to, I don't like spending more than a weekend (maybe like 6 hours max) stuck in a book. For someone like MJ who takes months to read a single book, it's damn near impossible (for some reason she bought the thousand-page "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, which has like 30 different plot points and even more characters to keep track of.......no way the general population gets through that nowadays. Other than that it's a great book. 

The Catcher in the Rye actually reads similary to this blog (I'm not trying to compare myself to Salinger). It's the rambling thoughts of a young man who's dropping out of college and thinks everyone he meets is phony, and details taking the train to New York City and spending time there. That's like a third of all the entries in this blog! It has dialogue, important to keep people like me awake, and it's set more or less in the modern era (before cell phones, so the storytelling is pretty relatable and Holden's thoughts are very relatable: the pressures of going to college, seeing through people who don't act genuinely, and the young man's desire to have sex. It even has recommendations of other classic books to read like The Great Gatsby, the Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy and Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa! 

Speaking of Great American writers, It's October, so it's Edgar Allen Poe month, with all his morbid writing and scary stories.....I went to a Poe festival over the weekend where there was dramatization of his short story "Berenice." Very unsettling story not unlike all his other stories of being buried alive, coffins, tell-tale hearts, illnesses.... there was also a couple there dressed up as Edgar Allen Poe and Virginia Clemm, his wife.... all black, heavy black makeup, it was like a Sex Pistols/ Green Day concert. As much as the stories give me the creeps, I appreciate that there are still festivals celebrating legendary authors... it's getting to be a dying breed, I feel like my interests are all aligned with the previous generation of orchestra concertgoers, book readers, and Jeopardy! viewers, which is why I usually end up as places with small crowds and minimal lines, which suits me just fine but also confiness the number of people I met and what I can discuss at dinner parties. I do feel a bit like Holden Caufield, a little isolated from society and dubious of how it works.