Black_Bird
Not Innocent
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2001
- Posts
- 9,019
[From Franny_and_Zooey by J.D. Salinger]
3/18/51
Dear Zooey,
I've just finished decoding a long letter that came from Mother this morning, all about you and General Eisenhower's smile and small boys in the Daily News who fall down elevator shafts and when am I going to have my phone in New York taken out and get one installed up here in the country, where I really need it. Surely the only woman in the world who can write a letter in invisible italics. Dear Bessie. I get five hundred words of copy from her like clockwork every three months on the subject of my poor old private phone and how stupid it is to pay Good Money every month for something nobody's ever even around to use any more. Which is really a big fat lie. When I'm in town I invariably sit talking by the hour with my old friend Yama, the God of Death, and a private phon's a must for our little chats. Anyway, please tell her I haven't changed my mind. I love that old phone with a passion. It was the only really private property Seymour and I ever had in Bessies entire Kibbutz. It's also essential to my inner harmony to see Seymour's listing in the goddamn phone book every year. I like to browse through the G's confidently. Be a good boy and pass that message along for me. Not quite word for word, but nicely. Be kinder to Bessie, Zooey, when ou can. I don't think I mean because she's our mother, but because she's weary. You will after your thrity or so, when everybody slows down a little (even you, maybe), but try harder now. It isn't enough to treat her with the doting brutality of an apache dancer toward his partner - which she understands, incidentally, whether you think so or now. You forget that she thrives on sentimentality almost as much as Les does.
...
...
...
What can I say? I love JD Salinger.
3/18/51
Dear Zooey,
I've just finished decoding a long letter that came from Mother this morning, all about you and General Eisenhower's smile and small boys in the Daily News who fall down elevator shafts and when am I going to have my phone in New York taken out and get one installed up here in the country, where I really need it. Surely the only woman in the world who can write a letter in invisible italics. Dear Bessie. I get five hundred words of copy from her like clockwork every three months on the subject of my poor old private phone and how stupid it is to pay Good Money every month for something nobody's ever even around to use any more. Which is really a big fat lie. When I'm in town I invariably sit talking by the hour with my old friend Yama, the God of Death, and a private phon's a must for our little chats. Anyway, please tell her I haven't changed my mind. I love that old phone with a passion. It was the only really private property Seymour and I ever had in Bessies entire Kibbutz. It's also essential to my inner harmony to see Seymour's listing in the goddamn phone book every year. I like to browse through the G's confidently. Be a good boy and pass that message along for me. Not quite word for word, but nicely. Be kinder to Bessie, Zooey, when ou can. I don't think I mean because she's our mother, but because she's weary. You will after your thrity or so, when everybody slows down a little (even you, maybe), but try harder now. It isn't enough to treat her with the doting brutality of an apache dancer toward his partner - which she understands, incidentally, whether you think so or now. You forget that she thrives on sentimentality almost as much as Les does.
...
...
...
What can I say? I love JD Salinger.
