& sons. david gilbert. (167)

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i checked out david gilbert's & sons, after reading about it on flavorwire's list of 15 best novels of 2013:  

of course, my love for salinger being the reason for my reading.  and i have to say its quite ambition to channel salinger for a character but gilbert's novel was well written and one that i assume salinger would not have hated.  but i can not sing its complete praises, wonderful prose, yes, but the storyline made a disappointing turn at the end.  (yes, there will be spoilers in this post.)

but lets start with some praising.  as i mentioned before expectations are set high when salinger is alluded to for a novel and gilbert did not disappoint.  he was witty and filled with wonderful allusions and imagery.  for example:

just a week earlier, the temperature sulked in the teens, the windchill dragging the brat into newborn territory.

(how clever!)

 

a.n. dyer's eulogy for his dear friend charlie toppings:

what are we in this world without our friends if family is the foundation then friends are its crossbeams it's drywall it's plumbing friends keep us warm and warmhearted friends furnish and with a friend like charlie topping i was never without a home. . . whenever i was need of succor--succor. . . i could count on charlie.  he was an unlocked door with something smelling good in the oven.  he was the fire in the fireplace, the blanket draped over the couch, the dog at my feet.  he was the shelter she. i was the storm.

(so sweet!)

and:

the bubbles in the champagne shimmied up the flutes, a hundred phony smilies breaking the surface, like some esther williams routine . . .

(i always adore an esther williams reference!)

and last but not least

every act of memory is an act of imagination.

(which is true, our minds fill in the gaps and so our memories are more imagination than actual recollection.)

the story is narratored by philip toppings, and his likability was on par with the awkward affection one feels for holden caulfield.  both are at low points in their life they differ in that i was hopeful that holden turns around, whereas with phillip i was just creeped out by him.  he went from pathetic yet insight godson of a.n. dyer to single white female.  i didn't care for his character and though i guess he was important because he revealed that & (a.n. dyer's novel in the book) was about dyer's dominance and abuse in their friendship and also for the letters that started different sections.  but other than that his creepy stalker behavior took away from the story of dyer and his son.  though i guess in the movie adaption of the book, he would make for a good point of view.

random digression, i could see this as a wes anderson movie, quirky family, absent father (weird cloning story), and creep neighbor.  bill murray as a.n. dyer, adrien brody and jason swartzman as richard and jaime, and owen wilson as phillip toppings.  not sure who would play andrew, guess he would have to look like a young bill murray.  (hollywood should make this happen!)

and now that i mentioned it the whole cloning storyline was not my cup of tea if it was true.  it is my cup of tea, if was some crazy story a.n. dyer made up to justify how he had ruined his life.  though towards the end of the novel it felt like it was to be true.  

and in the end, i didn't like andrew dying.  it just seemed so random and out of place.  its intent seemed more like a convienent way to finish up the story.  it was really great up until that point and then it fell apart for me and i started to lose interest. 

but i mean still check it out.  it is a good story and well-written and maybe you will enjoy the ending more than me.

and before i close i have to add.  this novel made me long for new york.  so many locations were mentioned that i could plan a whole tour of the city based on it.  my next trip out i will definitely hit up the frick!  and do central park proper, i mean i haven't even seen the alice in wonderland statues.  oh and i love love loved when andrew went to the met looking for jennie.  what an adorable game!!! i am going to do that someday.  call someone i am dating and tell them what museum, i am at and then say that i am staying in front of my favorite work of art and see of they can find me!  but seriously the whole time i read, i wished that i was in new york!

*forgot to take a picture before i returned the book.

catcher, caught. sarah collins honenberger.

i first saw "catcher, caught" on amazon's daily deal and the houseboat which i thought was a trailer, didn't intrigue me (who wants to read about white trash?) so i didn't read the description of it.  then, it reappeared in the kindle store and i read it was the story of a boy with only a year to live that runs away to new york inspired by "catcher in the rye", hence the title.  due to my love of" catcher in the rye", i was disappointed with myself for not buying it when it was a 1.99 on amazon.  but as luck would have it, when my mom took my brother to the san juan capistrano mission, i opt out of paying to see the mission, and went to the library.  where oddly enough i spent more money on books than my mission admission, and one of the books i purchased for $1 was "catcher, caught".

since i just finished "the catcher in the rye" and was going to new york, i decided to read "catcher, caught" since i would be in the right setting.  of course i didn't have any time to read in nyc and fell asleep on my flight there but that was fine because sadly the running away part was at the end and not the whole story.

i was disappointed because i thought "catcher, caught" would pay homage to "catcher" by being the story of a boy trying to find himself by retracing holden's stops in new york.  i mean that is what the back cover claimed, but it wasn't about that.  the setting for majority of the story is virginia, where the main character, daniel who is dying from leukemia, lives with his family in a houseboat.  daniel does read and analyze "the catcher in the rye" throughout the book but i was less interested because i wanted him to be in new york, trying to be holden.

to be honest, i didn't care for this book. one reason being that daniel did not seem like a 16 year old boy to me, but more like an older woman trying to sound like a 16 year old boy.  i have never been a 16 year old boy nor have i ever been faced with dying in a year but there are still some things i expect a teenager to act like regardless.  there were times where his thoughts were too sensitive for an adolescent male.  and the way he talked about meredith's body was way too mature for a 16 year old boy, don't they just want see tits?  also who has sex for the first time and it be this amazing experience?!?!  daniel was a 16 year old boy from the backwoods of virginia, i mean he would have lasted like 3 minutes if he was lucky.  and they did it twice? i mean they went through two condoms, and i am going to assume that one of them was broken because they didn't know how to put it on versus having sex twice. and yes, daniel was dying but meredith gave it up quite quickly.  i mean don't kids experiment with oral sex before they have actual sex?  also who lets their 16 year old twin daughters stay out til 1 am?  other than parents of teen moms.

another issue i had was daniel's relationship with his kid brother nick.  nick was younger and competitive (this adjective was used every time this character was mentioned, we got the point collins honenberger) and obviously having issues with his brother dying but daniel didn't try to help him cope with it.  he just got annoyed with him wanting pizza all the time.  daniel was having deep 40 year old woman thoughts about life but couldn't demonstrate any sent sensitivity towards his brother.  phoebe was so important to holden and daniel recognized that but sadly didn't apply it to his life.  a nice story plot would have been daniel seeing holden's love for phoebe as an example of how he should treat his brother.

another thing i could not handle were the hippie parents.  they made no sense to me as characters. first and foremost, the mom does not send him to school for fear of germs but they live on a houseboat!  how sanitary can a houseboat be? especially one docked on a river, shouldn't she be concerned about malaria carrying mosquitos?  and i am all up for alternative methods of medicine, i mean i take garlic cloves over cough syrup to stop a cough but your kid has a couple of years of life and you don't opt for chemo? i don't know what year this was suppose to take place in, maybe the early 90s (there was a cellphone but no mention of internet) and i know organic food is a recent trend but i would have like to have seen hippie mom with some illegal garden and feeding her kids from that.  also i wish the dad had a backbone, i mean he obviously wanted daniel to have chemo.  

in the end, daniel runs away to new york and discovered that holden's new york is  no longer there.  he also discovered how rich holden probably was.  it's funny co as a kid, i didn't noticed but when i reread as an adult, i got it.  i thought the whole scene in trump tower was kinda bogus.  it was the 90s, era of heroin chic so maybe they saw daniel's luekemia-ridden body and thought dope fiend.  but a kid has a nosebleed don't you help versus kick him out of your building, wouldn't donald be worried about a lawsuit?

the story comes to an abrupt ending in which yay! daniel gets chemo thanks to the state of new york!  and by the way, the person i liked the most was the nurse in the er, she was the only one with common sense.  she was also the only believable character.

in closing, just like i said in my goodreads review, if you are want to read this based on your love for "catcher" don't, just reread catcher instead.

the catcher in the rye. j. d. salinger.

i first heard of "the catcher in the rye" in the 1997 film "conspiracy theory" starring julia roberts and mel gibson.  in the film, gibson's character shared a conspiracy theory about how assassins are obsessed with the novel.  also gibson's character had an odd impulse to buy "the catcher in the rye" and looked for it in every bookstore he walked by.  i will admit that due to the film, every time i was in a bookstore, i would wander over to the s section to look for "catcher" (i was an odd kid).  but thanks to the film, i read it and fell in love with "the catcher in the rye" and it became one of my favorite books. on my first read, my favorite part was how holden kept on asking where the ducks went in the winter.  i though it was such a quirky thing to ask and couldn't believe no one had an answer for him.  i will also admit that i missed the whole him writing his story from a mental institution thing.

i read "catcher", my junior year on my own and then mr. brice (one of my favorite teachers) assigned it my senior year.  in fact, the copy i reread (for this blog) was from my senior year, though not mine, i somehow ended up with stephen warren's book:

 

i remember we had an assignment in which we had to draw what was in holden's mind.  i drew the ducks at the lagoon, allie's baseball mitt, his red hunting hat (which i drew more of like a three musketeers hat but with less brim because of all the talk of it's peak, i now know what a hunting hat looks like thanks to google), a checker board with all the kings in the back row and a carousel.  what is interesting, the images i drew were still my favorite parts during the reread, especially allie's mitt covered in poetry.  i was relieved that these images stood out to me because i was worried i would not enjoy "catcher", as an  adult.

since i am going to new york this weekend, i decided to reread "catcher" because the protagonist in "truth in advertising" retraced holden's footsteps when he first moved to new york. i want to do the same but decided i should save it for a trip in the winter, it wouldn't be the same to have the ducks there.  also it is on flavorpill's 30 before 30 and figured i should give it another read before i am old.  i was worried about reading it again but as you have seen with other classics, i discovered that i should have read them when i was younger to get their full effect.  i was scared i would be annoyed by holden and all of his talk about phonies but in fact i loved him just the same.  i still

think it is better to meet holden when you are in high school but i had a better understanding of him when i met him again as an adult.

as a teen, his perspectives on life and society left an impression on me, even though i was the anti-holden.  i was a well-adjusted kid, got good grades, involved in a bunch of extra-curricular activities, stayed out of trouble and didn't hate the world or anything.  but i was at the age where i was starting to question authority, not my parents but school administration and church regulations.  i was starting to see that adults didn't have all the answers or necessarily did what was right and so holden's talk of phonies and all of the contradictions within society was eye opening. he demonstrated not to take the world at face value and you should question society.

i am not saying that holden didn't have issues.  he definitely did but he was also misunderstood, i realized that when i caught myself judging him.  it was when he discussed how he hates people with cheap luggage.  at first, i thought he was being pretentious but after he shared the story of his roommate with cheap luggage that tried to pass off holden's luggage as his own, his hatred made sense.  he didn't hate cheap luggage it was a metaphor for his hatred of how expensive things make others feel inferior.  i thought it was nice how he tried to hide his luggage to make his roommate feel comfortable.  holden was actually full of good intentions, just like this.  he was caring which is why he wanted to be a catcher in the rye; to save and protect others. deep down inside, holden had a heart of gold, he just had issues because of his brother allie's death.  

on this reread, i realized for the first time how much allie's death affected holden.  i knew he had a difficult time with allie's death, the breaking widows and even missing the funeral due to being in the hospital.  i thought holden's issues were due to him feeling like an outcast from society but his alienation was the result of his brother's death.  as a teen, death is an abstract concept, those that die around us are usually older and so it makes sense, there is no need to question the universe for its actions. however it is not the same when it's with someone young.  i only had older relatives die when i was young, so i never made the connection as to how a sibling's death at a young age can affect someone.  but now i can imagine how it must have been for holden.  no wondered he hated the world, he was dealt a bad hand. it also explained why holden was so hung up on saying good-bye.  his searching for a sense of farewell during his final days at pencey seemed odd but was understandable in this context.  it also explained why he wanted to make sure to tell phoebe bye instead of just leaving as he did with everyone else.  (and luckily he did because he then got the help that he needed.)

the loss of allie left a void in holden's life which he could not fill with actual friends (with the exception of jane).  i think a lot of people who read "catcher" get caught up on the fact the hired a prostitute or was constantly calling up people to go out drinking.  but it wasn't because he was a sex fiend or an alcoholic but simply he was lonely.  he sadly did not have anyone in his life except his sister.  it made me sad how desperately he tried to make friends at bars, i was genuinely embarrassed for him every time he tried to buy someone a drink.  though i will admit that if i was carl luce, i would have left him too, he was so annoying with his sex talk. but i forgave him in the book because i saw how goddamn lonely he was.

random sidenote:  but i thought it was admirable how holden respected that no meant no even though he talked about sex a lot.

as i said before i am not denying that holden needed to be psychoanalyzed. his talk of killing or injuring people was very disturbing.  another thing i better understood on the reread was his moment of what would appear to be schizophrenia.  living in la, i encountered a lot of homeless schizophrenics talking to themselves, this was not the case in delano.  due to this, as a teen, i didn't think much of holden talking to allie as he walked around but now i get how crazy he must have looked.  i had always thought it as sweet, keeping allie's memory alive but the talking to him was a huge indication of holden's need for help.  also he was a pathological liar too.  though i do forgive him for lying to that one's kid's mother on the train cos no one wants to hear how their kid is actually an asshole.

but i am glad he did get help because holden is one of my favorite characters. i want to be hopeful about his future.  i really do think holden and i would have been good friends.  there were so many random things he said that i totally got.  

like when he talks about good books:

what really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him

io on the phone whenever you felt like it.

i wish some of my favorite authors were my friends.  i also agreed with him that "a farewell to arms" is horrible, i have no idea why people like it when hemingway has written better. also loved how he quoted "old sport" from "gatsby".

i also love his quote "i'm illiterate but i read a lot."

though morbid, i do agree with his "who wants flowers when your dead? nobody!" i don't want flowers right now alive.  

there are a handful of other gems he shares but this blog is already long so i won't continue.

as i mentioned before i read this as part of flavorpill's 30 before 30, i also said that i thought it was best to read in high school but a reread in your late twenties is good, especially during your "return of saturn" or if you having a quarter life crisis.  if you know me, you know i love birthdays but i also have peter pan syndrome.  but i am dreading turning 30 tomorrow, like sylvia plath-ing it sounds like a good alternative to getting old.  and oddly enough this book was the perfect read for me on the eve of my birthday because like me, holden is scared of growing up.

holden and i both share a love of natural history museums.  my favorite part of the museums are the dioramas, i love seeing the taxidermy animals in their habitats.  there is something magical about the darkness of the hall and the bright lights and scenes in the dioramas.  however, as i read holden's description of the natural history museum, i saw why holden and i both love natural history museums.  it is because time is on pause  in natural history museums . holden discussed how he loved how phoebe can experience the museum just as he did because it stays the same.  i never thought of it that way but this makes sense.  if i could pause life like a diorama, i would, there are so many times in life where i am just so content that i wish it could last forever. also life is preserved in natural history museums and i am very nostalgic, my past is filled with so many great memories, that i often revisit it via pictures. it's the same for holden, his past has his brother alive so he would want it that way as well.  

another way we are similar is our attempts to avoid growing up. i never took notice of it on my previous reads but if i was sally hayes, i would jump at the opportunity to runway to vermont or massachusetts.  choose a simple life instead of one complicated with education, class, wealth and social norms. but alas just like holden, i have to grow up and become a mature (read: married and with kids) person.  its odd because i thought i learned this in high school when i had my whole life ahead of me but i guess i needed to read it again.