p.g 121

It’s my copy of the paperback book, the one I bought at the “Paper Peddler” on Dune Drive in 1972, home from college. I wanted to re-read this and I did. Lost my copy from High School. So years later he wanted to read something important and he asked me what this book on my shelf was about and I said, well it’s about a few things, here let’s read it together, so we did over the course of a few weeks when he was 13 I think. We talked about it and laughed at Holden Caulfield’s view of life and the crazy roommates he had. That year we went to see the film “Roger Dodger” and thought that this film could have been a sequel because Rodger reminded us both of Holden and the kid in the film changed like Holden changed, just over the course of a day or so in New York City. We both talked about how we were pissed at Salinger for not allowing anyone to film the story and we both discussed who should play who if we were casting the film. I gave him the book. A few years later I found it in his room, next to his copies of Gatsby and On The Road, our mutual selection of the top three American novels of the 20th Century. Inside the back cover he wrote, p.g. 121 (page 121). It’s the part where Holden reminisces abut the times he went on field trips to the Natural History Museum, how he “…loved that goddamn museum”, and how he realized that each time he went there he had changed in some way even if it was just the different coat he wore, how he wished he could put life in one of those glass cases and keep it from changing.