My concentration in reading was suddenly cut off by a youthful female voice from my side. I looked up and was greeted by the face of a young lady. She looks like she's around 20 years old. She spoke rather apologetically, as though conscious of and worried that her unexpected interruption would be met with rebuke and unfriendliness.
Having got my attention now, she continued in her timid but firm voice: "Did you get it from a local bookstore somewhere?"
I was a little thrown off the course but was able to grasp her question and give a reply.
"Oh, i got it from Kino."
And that was it. She promptly thanked me before turning to the other side. As quickly as she had stunned me with the question, she had disappeared back to her original position, probably embarrassed at having accosted a complete stranger in the train. I couldn't concentrate after that and was started to make some speculations.
Given the very English way that she spoke and her interest in a rather literary piece of work at her young age, I guessed she is probably a literature student. Yet I remained rather half convinced because I thought a literature student must surely be acquainted with local bookstores than to ask that question. She could even have asked her fellow lit friends or borrowed the book from the school library.
I reckoned she must have been looking for the book for a long time but to no avail. If not, what could have made her summon the courage to interrupt a stranger standing in the train? Her body was completely slanted to the side after she thanked me, such that there's no way we could have made any further eye contact. Two stations later, she alighted the train, and I quickly forgot about the incident and returned to my book.
She was clearly interested in the book only, not the reader.
I bought The Catcher in the Rye only a week ago. It's a classic and very entertaining read. Embarrassingly, it was the writer's recent death that provided the catalyst for me to start reading it. Like a few other books, Catcher in the Rye has always been around and featured in the bookstores as one of those literary classics. I tend to avoid these mass-publicised books, preferring to start on them later.
Then came news of the writer's passing on. I read the papers and for the first time got acquainted with the writer and the novel that brought him fame. I knew I had to read the book and would enjoy it. I was proven right. Reading the novel, I found myself smiling, if not laughing, often, as though I am reading part of myself in some of the situations described. It's quite a gem really. I only regret that I didn't get started on it earlier.
Excerpt:
"Anyway, it took me about half hour to find out where they all worked and all in Seattle. They all worked in the same insurance office. I asked them if they liked it, but do you think you could get an intelligent answer out of those three dopes? I thought the two ugly ones, Marty and Laverne, were sisters, but they got very insulted when I asked them. You could tell neither one of them wanted to look like the other one, and you couldn't blame them, but it was very amusing anyway.
"I danced with them all - the whole three of them - one at a time. The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.
"Where?" she asked me - excited as hell. "Where?"
"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"
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