Friday, January 29, 2010 ... 11:03 AM
Holden
What the detractors don't get is that it's not Holden's privileged adolescent complaining, not his lousy spoiled attitude, that makes him such an indelible, lasting, loved character -- although, frankly, his bitching and moaning is the most hilarious and heartfelt in literature. But what really sticks, what changed me, personally, the reason I go back to Catcher again and again, is the way he loves the world around him, without quite understanding that he does, but showing his love through his description of it -- his "DIGRESSION!" In phrases he coins like "rollerskate skinny"; the way Allie's hair was so red Holden sensed that if he turned around, Allie would be standing behind him; the feel of a skate key in his hands; a jazz record called "Little Shirley Beans"; the way the kettle drum player at Radio City was so attentive even though he only got to hit his drum once; the way Jay Gatsby was always calling people "old sport"; Jane Gallagher's kings in the back row, which despite what high school teachers insist is not so much an algebraic symbol for Jane's self-defense as just a sweet, cute thing that she did that made Holden happy when he thought about it; the way girls, "every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are." It's a way of relating to the world, of experiencing and loving the world, that is distinctly literary -- and encompasses, contains, all of his disgust and his crushing melancholy. It is poetry. He felt the tiniest things so fully, and he didn't know how to handle it, because he was just a kid.
Brendan
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Making Notes: Music of the Carolinas
(Novello Festival Press, April 2008)
includes my essay, "Link Wray"
MUSIC
Flop Eared Mule
The Celestial Monochord
HickoryWind.org
Dig and Be Dug in Return
Modern Acoustic Magazine / Blog
The Old, Weird America
Honey, Where You Been So Long?
LITERATURE
The Greensboro Review
Mixed Animal
Night Train
Fried Chicken and Coffee
Mungo (This was the blog of my friend, the late Cami Park. Miss you, Cami.)
Staccato Fiction
Wigleaf
PANK Magazine
OTHER
Cat and Girl
Film Freak Central
