The aspect of writing in depth

your name

instructor 's name

course title

7 May 2008

With Apologies to J . D . Salinger

Once upon a time , great novels - literature - would reach down and capture the very souls of generations of young readers , novels such as Catcher in the Rye (Salinger , Catch-22 (Heller , Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut . For those who came of age in the fifties , Catcher in the Rye (Catcher , the of this , the humor , despair , and contempt for the values of Holden Caulfield 's time were immediate from the first sentence . But the magic may take a

little longer to get started , but it 's there waiting for those of us who reach inside ourselves and find Holden 's blood running in our own veins , his heart beating in ours , and his truths buried in our brains . In terse strokes that make you roar with laughter and then want to cry , a great lesson Salinger taught is that writing in depth , like great dancing , should appear easy

How Have You Been , Holden

Remember that strange old girl I told you about , Jenni Someoneorother . The one whose parents were hippies who turned into yuppies and named her Jennifer because `what can you say about a girl who died when she was 25 (Segal ) and all that crap . But this Jenny became Jenni and we met at some goddam (I like this spelling ) protest against the war in Iraq and we had sex and she was 34 and the next day she wanted me to meet her goddam mother who must have decided she wanted a son-in-law , someone like Dr . Caulder von Hotshot . Like anyone else except goddam morons and those phonies getting rich off of the war , I was against it but I knew nothing would change until a couple of psychos decided to show off their toys and put the world out of its misery (I think I stole that from Casablanca

Anyway , I didn 't do anything really dumb like become a hotshot doctor but girls with first names that end in i ' seem to hop in the sack with Dr . Anyone . Remember how I told you how I met her again yesterday at one of those goddam malls all over the place now , how she asked me all teary-eyed about my `practice ' I think I had told her I was a hotshot cardiologist who made billions and then opened a free clinic in Harlem or some sort of crap , so this time , I told her I had to retire when I found out I had terminal prostate cancer , but even though I didn 't die , unfortunately , I lost my `manhood (well , what word would you have used

Then , later , I started thinking about her and all the others named Jenni , or Lili , or Emmi , or whatever , and how it still happens - whenever you start to think about someone , even a phony piece of fluff you start missing them . When I get that way , all depressed and acting like a madman , I wind up...