Properties
- end_line
- 4616
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:18:35.105Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4569
- text
- 4374 "So. You and Pencey are no longer one," he said. He always said things that way.
4375 Sometimes it amused me a lot and sometimes it didn't. He sort of did it a little bit too
4376 much. I don't mean he wasn't witty or anything--he was--but sometimes it gets on your
4377 nerves when somebody's always saying things like "So you and Pencey are no longer
4378 one." D.B. does it too much sometimes, too.
4379 "What was the trouble?" Mr. Antolini asked me. "How'd you do in English? I'll
4380 show you the door in short order if you flunked English, you little ace composition
4381 writer."
4382 "Oh, I passed English all right. It was mostly literature, though. I only wrote about
4383 two compositions the whole term," I said. "I flunked Oral Expression, though. They had
4384 this course you had to take, Oral Expression. That I flunked."
4385 "Why?"
4386 "Oh, I don't know." I didn't feel much like going into It. I was still feeling sort of
4387 dizzy or something, and I had a helluva headache all of a sudden. I really did. But you
4388 could tell he was interested, so I told him a little bit about it. "It's this course where each
4389 boy in class has to get up in class and make a speech. You know. Spontaneous and all.
4390 And if the boy digresses at all, you're supposed to yell 'Digression!' at him as fast as you
4391 can. It just about drove me crazy. I got an F in it."
4392 "Why?"
4393 "Oh, I don't know. That digression business got on my nerves. I don't know. The
4394 trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all."
<!-- [Page 99](arke:01KFYTAC9CG9XQG6QBG55YNJ0F) -->
4395 "You don't care to have somebody stick to the point when he tells you
4396 something?"
4397 "Oh, sure! I like somebody to stick to the point and all. But I don't like them to
4398 stick too much to the point. I don't know. I guess I don't like it when somebody sticks to
4399 the point all the time. The boys that got the best marks in Oral Expression were the ones
4400 that stuck to the point all the time--I admit it. But there was this one boy, Richard
4401 Kinsella. He didn't stick to the point too much, and they were always yelling 'Digression!'
4402 at him. It was terrible, because in the first place, he was a very nervous guy--I mean he
4403 was a very nervous guy--and his lips were always shaking whenever it was his time to
4404 make a speech, and you could hardly hear him if you were sitting way in the back of the
4405 room. When his lips sort of quit shaking a little bit, though, I liked his speeches better
4406 than anybody else's. He practically flunked the course, though, too. He got a D plus
4407 because they kept yelling 'Digression!' at him all the time. For instance, he made this
4408 speech about this farm his father bought in Vermont. They kept yelling 'Digression!' at
4409 him the whole time he was making it, and this teacher, Mr. Vinson, gave him an F on it
4410 because he hadn't told what kind of animals and vegetables and stuff grew on the farm
4411 and all. What he did was, Richard Kinsella, he'd start telling you all about that stuff--then
4412 all of a sudden he'd start telling you about this letter his mother got from his uncle, and
4413 how his uncle got polio and all when he was forty-two years old, and how he wouldn't let
4414 anybody come to see him in the hospital because he didn't want anybody to see him with
4415 a brace on. It didn't have much to do with the farm--I admit it--but it was nice. It's nice
4416 when somebody tells you about their uncle. Especially when they start out telling you
4417 about their father's farm and then all of a sudden get more interested in their uncle. I
4418 mean it's dirty to keep yelling 'Digression!' at him when he's all nice and excited. I don't
4419 know. It's hard to explain." I didn't feel too much like trying, either. For one thing, I had
- title
- Chunk 2