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- 7 If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is
8 where I was born, an what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were
9 occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I
10 don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff
11 bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece
12 if I told anything pretty personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like
13 that, especially my father. They're nice and all--I'm not saying that--but they're also
14 touchy as hell. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or
15 anything. I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last
16 Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. I
17 mean that's all I told D.B. about, and he's my brother and all. He's in Hollywood. That
18 isn't too far from this crumby place, and he comes over and visits me practically every
19 week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe. He just got a
20 Jaguar. One of those little English jobs that can do around two hundred miles an hour. It
21 cost him damn near four thousand bucks. He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to.
22 He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home. He wrote this terrific book of
23 short stories, The Secret Goldfish, in case you never heard of him. The best one in it was
24 "The Secret Goldfish." It was about this little kid that wouldn't let anybody look at his
25 goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It killed me. Now he's out in
26 Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even
27 mention them to me.
28 Where I want to start telling is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this
29 school that's in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You've probably seen
30 the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some
31 hotshot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was
32 play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And
33 underneath the guy on the horse's picture, it always says: "Since 1888 we have been
34 molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men." Strictly for the birds. They don't
35 do any damn more molding at Pencey than they do at any other school. And I didn't know
36 anybody there that was splendid and clear-thinking and all. Maybe two guys. If that
37 many. And they probably came to Pencey that way.
38 Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game
39 with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game
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