Back in the Summer of 2015 I went to New York to meet with my dad. This time around I decided to discover the city following the steps of Holden Caulfield in my favourite book of all time, “The Catcher in the Rye”.
I read this book for the first time as a teenager and ever since have as a yearly ritual to read it every January. It is always the first book I read every year and every single time I do it, I end up taking something different out of it.
Manhattan
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Central Park
“‘Hey, listen,’ I said. ‘You know those ducks in that lagoon right near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know, by any chance?’ I realized it was only one chance in a million.”
American Museum of Natural History
“The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.”
Metropolitan Museum of Art
“Dear Phoebe,
I can’t wait around till Wednesday any more so I will probably hitch hike out west this afternoon. Meet me at the museum of art near the door at quarter past 12 if you can and I will give you your Christmas dough back. I didn’t spend much.
Love,
Holden”
“Where’re the mummies, fella?” the kid said again. “Ya know?”
Central Park Carousel
“’Did you mean it what you said? You really aren’t going anywhere? Are you really going home afterwards?’ she asked me. ‘Yeah,’ I said. I meant it, too. I wasn’t lying to her. I really did go home afterwards. ‘Hurry up, now,’ I said. ‘The thing’s starting.’ She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the goddam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back”
“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody”
Renata Miranda 