Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye discussion

Holden says he is a terrific liar. Chapter 3. What has he lied about so far? I would say his number one lie is that he hates the movies. This has prompted me to look at every movie alluded to or that was popular, that was produced before the Catcher was written. This would have been part of the literature of the culture of the day. I was not part of that generation, so I am relying on other people's favorite WW2 movies to help guide my taste. So far I think it has been profitable.

So another popular movie is called Man Hunt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Hunt...

This is based on the book Rogue Male
I started reading this when I read that the author of the book was encouraged by the Atlantic Monthly to write a novel. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffr...


"Meanwhile, encouraged by "Atlantic Monthly" he started to write professionally. His first novel, "The Third Hour", appeared in 1937, followed by a collection of short stories. One of his most successful novels was 1937's "Rogue Male", but he was unable to profit from its success as he had already been posted to Romania as an intelligence officer by the time it appeared. He was later transferred to the Middle East and remained there until 1945, after which he had almost to start again as a writer.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0396716/bi...

So if you remember Old Spencer kept dropping the Atlantic Monthly on the floor. Was this Salinger's way of saying "dropping hints"? I decided to read Rogue Male and see if there might be any lines in the book that Salinger copied.

I found this quote interesting because it reflects something that Salinger talks about in referring to school...

"I have been through a initiation ceremony on the ...the only way I could persuade them to teach me a slight muscular control over hemorrhage. And I thought it more of a disagreeable experience rather than a proof of maturity. It lasted only a day and a night. Whereas the initiation of the tribal ceremony of the English lasted ten years of education. We torture a boys spirit rather than his body. But all torture in the end is directed at the spirit. I was conditioned to endure without making an ass of myself, that is all I mean by detachment."

Old Spencer reads Holden's essay on page 11:

"I had to sit there and listen to that crap. It certainly was a dirty trick.

"The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons. Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries. This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century. "

This sounds like a riddle, something to figure out. In my book I put a note "save face: - to keep your reputation and the respect of other people."

Well tonight in Rogue Male I read:

"I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in human beings is not the ability to produce food- which they take for granted- but his or her entertainment value. Asmodeus took to his toy enthusiastically. In another week he permitted me to stroke him, producing a raucous purr, but in order to save his face pretending to be asleep."

The man in the story named the cat Asmodeus because it was a wild cat. It was not civilized. Which reminds me of the Navajo blanket that Old Spencer is wearing. Also this reminds me of what the people of the great depression were going through. They were being conditioned to go into another world world through the theaters. (See my post on Radio City Music Hall)

Asmodeus http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodeus. He is a king of demons[1] mostly known from the deutero-canonical Book of Tobit, in which he is the primary antagonist.[2] The demon is also mentioned in some Talmudic legends, for instance, in the story of the construction of the Temple of Solomon."

Follow the link to "Book of Tobit" :

"The Book of Tobit is listed in the canon of the Councils of Hippo (393 AD), Carthage (397 AD), and Florence (1442), and is part of the canon of both the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Churches, although Roman Catholics often refer to it as deuterocanonical.[1]

"It is listed as a book of the "Apocrypha" in Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.[2] Tobit is regarded by Protestants as apocryphal because it was not included within the Tanakh nor considered canonical by Judaism."

This is interesting because of The Thirty Nine Steps.The Thirty-Nine Steps. Greenmantle
Now I want to read The Book of Tobit and the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty...
I don't know if this is relevant or not. It is like working a puzzle sometimes the prices fit and sometimes they don't fit yet. If you can study the world in a grain of rice then Salinger has done this, for me in the book THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

Another thing that is significant about Geoffrey Household is that he worked as an intelligence agent for the British government during WW2. Somerset Maugham worked as an agent in WW2.

I have yet to watch the movie Man Hunt. When I do I will comment below about that.