Bloggin' with Holden

I really appreciate the discussions we have in class. Being able to talk to other people about what they're getting out of the book as well as having to verbalize what we ourselves are thinking really gives us a more in depth look at the book. It really does. And it's not at all fake conversation stuff either. It's in depth and not phony and all. I needed to say that before getting into talking about those scenes. You'll see what I mean.

So we have a person like Caulfield in New York City, late at night and horny as all get out. He's really raring to go and get out there. So what he does is he goes down to some crumby little club in a hotel. Not the kind that you'd take a nice girl to have a good time. The kind of club that you'd go to if you wanted to find some crumby old girl looking for a crumby old time. The band that's playing isn't that great either. The guy who's singing sounds like he thinks he's on goshdarn Broadway or something. A phony. A real phony. You wouldn't believe it.

Anyway Holden gets there and being horny and all notices first off three women sitting in a booth together. Except these aren't the type of women you think of when you describe a girl being a woman. These are like giggly little broads who barely moved out of the house. But Holden didn't really know that at the time so of course he goes right into and tries putting the moves on the one who seems the most attractive, a blonde. Giving her the eye and finally when he starts talking to them directing the conversation at her and all that. He asks this blonde to dance and when he's out there he starts to realize what an airhead he chose to lay the moves on. She's the kind of girl who won't really be paying attention to what you're saying, making intelligent conversation kinda hard, and when she finally realizes that you've been carrying on the conversation without her she lets out the most innocent airheaded "What?" These girls make it out like they're half deaf or something. Like these phonies think that if they act spacey, some guy's going to think they're mysterious or something.

Anyways, Holden is putting up with this dumb broad so he can get into her pants, but he starts getting the feeling that it's going to be a bit harder than expected. Mostly because he's going to have to teach her how to unzip them before he gets anywhere. He moves onto the other two and realizes that he chose the wrong bar to pick anybody up in. One of them's a broken record with stupid sarcastic comments about Holden's age, and the other is even more of an airhead than the blonde. Jeeze. You think that'd there be at least one decent girl in there but the place might as well be empty with all the phonies in there. They're either trying to come across as dumb, which frankly I don't find attractive at all, or they're acting all uppity to try to seem smarter.

I think this is a scene that shows clearly how Holden is just surrounded by fake people, and that frustrates him. He sees the fakeness around him and responds to that by lying and spinning a web. It's like he feels that that's his only option or something, being a phony to the phony. I also think that the sexual frustration he shows in this scene is something that can be seen in other parts of the book as well as explaining a bit about Holden. I mean, this guy is obviously pretty crumby but I think that this concretes how he thinks. He has a pretty negative view on people in general and psychoanalyzes them accordingly. Of course, he isn't a shrink or anything, but the way he gets in people's heads and labels them on the type of phony they are. It's kind of sad. Honestly.