“The Catcher In The Rye” - Prologue

Just dug this up. For my senior year of highschool, our big final English project was to write a prologue to any of the books that we had read. Basically the goal was to try and somewhat replicate the writing style or the voice of the narrator, but with our own spin on it and also to imagine what may have come before the first chapter.

I naturally went with “Catcher”. Here’s what I came up with.

“The Catcher In The Rye” Prologue

By Dom Portalla

So here I am walking down this long, crazy white hallway. This place is full of long white hallways. I guess white is supposed to be a good color to have in one of these places because it’s light. They don’t want the hallways to be black or any other dark colors because people are supposed to respond all crazy to darkness. They said that was my problem. This one psychoanalyst guy was telling me that one of the reasons I was having so much trouble coping with all the madman stuff that happened to me last Christmas was because of the darkness. December is the darkest month of the year apparently.  He was a real asshole, the psychoanalyst guy. These people are always making excuses for the way you feel. If you’re depressed it’s because of what month it is of what color the wall is. I tried telling him that wasn’t the case, but he said he went to school for like ten years and he knew what he was talking about. You can’t teach those guys anything. They like to wrap everything up into neat little packages. He knows everything, he went to school for ten years. Big deal.

Anyways, I’m walking down this white hallways and I’m heading over to this guy Dr. Bickle’s office. Dr. Bickle, this guy was going to be a piece of work. He was going to be my “personal therapist”. He was supposed to tell me how to feel better and concentrate and all that jazz. What a crock. I don’t think there’s anything worse than a shrink; someone who pretends to listen to your problems and care about you and then charges you for his time. Phony bastards. My parents made me go see one of these guys when Allie died. He was such a moron. He kept asking me questions like, “how does that make you feel”? and “why do you think you felt that way?” How was I supposed to know? I felt like telling him, “why don’t you tell me, that’s what my parents are paying you for”, but I was too yellow to say it.

Anyways, this place that I’m in, they call it a rest home. That killed me, rest home. Who the hell here was resting? With all the crumby questions they ask you who the hell had time to rest. Besides, most of the people here were crazy anyways, so it wasn’t like they could rest, they were too busy being nuts. I hated that, the way they had to give this place a fake name like “rest home”. They should just call it a “nut house” since that’s really all it was. This one day, when we were in the visiting room, that’s the room where everyone here in the hut house goes when people come to visit, this little kid and his mom came in. I heard the kid keep asking his mom, “is this the looney-bin?” That killed me. What a funny kid. His mom kept telling him to be quiet because he was kind of shouting it. She didn’t want all the crazy bastards in the place to hear the kid calling the rest home a looney-bin. She must have thought they’d all break down and have a conniption if they knew they were in a looney-bin. He quiet down for a second and ask her again, “but mom, isn’t this the looney-bin?” It was funny, it really was. That was the great thing about kids, they never worried about what some nut would do if they heard him call the place a looney-bin or a nut house. They just said what they thought. You’re only like that when you’re a kid, though, once you grow up you either become a phony or an asshole like that psychoanalyst guy. People should never grow up, you get ruined when you get older, you really do.

So the kid kept asking that question and his mother got so angry at him. She must have been real nervous one of these morons would snap. I tried so hard not to laugh, I don’t know why. I should’ve just laughed now that I think about it, but I guess I didn’t think it would be appropriate at the moment. It really didn’t matter though, what the kid was saying. I figured if you were in here you ought to know that you’re nuts. There was no reason to pretend like you weren’t. I’m not nuts though, I’m really not. I’m only here because my parents wanted me to go, but I’m not like any of these fools.

Anyways, I walk into this Dr. Bickle’s office and he’s sitting there behind his desk. Right when I got in the room he said hello and asked me to take a seat on this little couch. He didn’t even get up from his chair or try to shake my hand or anything. What a rude son of a bitch. I’m supposed to trust this guy and he doesn’t even have any manners. I hate when people don’t have manners. Maybe he thought I was nuts like the other morons in here and he didn’t want to touch me, but he should have at least stood up when I came in. I think I already hate him, I really do. That’s the problem with people, they never act the way they should. They just sit at their desks and don’t even move when someone comes into their office. They’re all the same.

I sat down on his crumby couch. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes. He was reading something in a manila folder. It must have been my file because right on the folder in big letters I could see “HOLDEN CAULFIELD”. I wonder what he was reading about me. I bet it said something stupid like “reacts crazy to dark rooms”. What a bunch of crap.

“Holden,” he said, “how are you feeling today?”

“Fine sir,” I said. I bet he really cared about how I felt. At least I was trying to be polite, though.

“So, is there anything you want to talk about?”
There was a lot I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t feel like talking about it with this phony. I really didn’t. I hated him;

“Not really, sir. I’m actually kind of tired. I just had a visit from my father and he’s been sort of giving me hell.”

“For anything in particular?”

“Just about school. He keeps telling me I need to do better next fall when I start again. I don’t think he’s fully forgiven me for getting kicked out of Pency.” Why am I telling him this? People always tell me I’m a talker. Once someone gets me started I don’t stop. This one guy, Brendt, that I went to school with at Silden Academy told me I talked a lot. We’d get into a conversation that I thought was half way intellectual and I’d get going about something and and he’s stop me mid-sentence and tell me to shut up. He said I could talk someone’s ear off. He told me I could never stay on subject either; I’d always start talking about something else. I was a “digresser”, that’s what he called me. What the hell did he know anyway? He was a real ignorant moron. He really was. I hate when someone tells you to shut up when you’re in the middle of making a point. People are really ignorant.

“Are you angry that your father hasn’t forgiven you?”

“I’m not angry, I can’t exactly blame him for being mad at me, but I just don’t think he understands.” Damn, this guy is getting me going. I really don’t think that I want to get into this. He didn’t say anything for a minute. He looked like he was thinking real hard. I wanted to tell him not to think too hard, it only gets you into trouble. If you think too hard you might end up in a rest home.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to my jacket. My red hunting hat that I had bought last year was sticking out of my pocket. I’ve carried it around with me every say since the day I went to the fair with old Phoebe. It’s a good type of hat, it gives you a lot of protection if you’re in the middle of a really bad rain storm.

“That’s my hat,” I told him. I knew he only asked me because he wanted to take a break from thinking so hard so he wouldn’t end up a nut like everyone in this place, but I was kind of glad he reminded me that I had it with me.

“Holden,” he started slowly. He was obviously going to say something very profound. Big deal. I bet he went to school for ten years, too. I was damn well impressed.

“…Sometimes a person lives inside his mind too much. They have too much to say without ever using words. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes it’s good to talk about the things you’re thinking about. If you harbor too many thoughts all at once you can grow to be a very angry and confused person and if you talk about what’s bothering you, by the end of what you want to say you might realize something very prolific. You might come up with something that would sound great at the end of a book. So Holden, I’ll ask you again, is there anything you want to talk about?”

What a son of a bitch. He had to go and do it. He was going to get me started and I really didn’t want to, but I had to now. I couldn’t help myself. Christ, it was going to come down to this, wasn’t it? I was going to sit here with someone I hate and pour my stupid heart out. The hell with it, I might as well. No reason to resist anymore. I’m sitting in some rest home surrounded by a bunch of psychotic screwballs; I might as well just spill it. Maybe he was right anyways. Maybe you shouldn’t think too much. Who cares? I’ll just tell him. He was a ten year graduate who knows everything. Big fucking deal. I needed to get all of this off my chest, I really did. I took out my red hunting had, put it on and I let go.

“If you really want to hear about it….”