From Richard Brody’s blog at the New Yorker:
I remembered this passage from the F. Scott Fitzgerald story “The Freshest Boy”:
He had contributed to the events by which another boy was saved from the army of the bitter, the selfish, the neurasthenic and the unhappy. It isn’t given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.
—and it occurred to me that more than everything else—more than all the things in his stories that I have been inspired by and imitated and stolen to the best of my abilities—THIS describes my experience of the works of J. D. Salinger.
I have been against the idea of a Catcher in the Rye movie for years now but it just dawned on me that the only person I could accept that movie from is Wes Anderson.
@Jessica:
Have to agree with you on that, though i would hope he’d make it a much darker film than we’re used to from Wes.
I know! I had the same epiphany not two days ago.
The problem is that such an adaptation would resemble Rushmore on several levels. Particularly the “bright-young-kid-who-really-just-needs-to-apply-himself-gets-kicked-out-of-prep-school” level.
Still…