The Top

From Catcher in the Rye

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This Top is the place where nobody goes

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The top is the place where children run towards the edge of a cliff, the end of their childhood and Holden Caulfield wanted to 'catch' them to prevent them becoming phoney adults.

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P23

"You know what I'd like to be?" I said. "You know what I'd like to be? I mean if I had my goddam choice?"

"What? Stop swearing."

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? I'd like--" "It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a

poem. By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I

didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all

these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

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Walking these gorgeous blocks

 

13

I walked all the way back to the hotel. Forty-one gorgeous blocks. I didn't do it because I felt like walking or anything. It was more because I didn't feel like getting in...

 

From Teddy

9 stories (pdf online)

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It's jesus brilliant

You used to laugh

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That's a Jesus-brilliant thing to say," Mr. McArdle said quietly-steadily, addressing the back of his wife's head. "I pay twenty-two pounds for a bag, and I ask the boy civilly not to stand on it, and you tell him to jump up and down on it. What's that supposed to be? Funny?"

P69

 

 

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