Properties
- end_line
- 4730
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T17:18:35.106Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 4681
- text
- 4482 again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret
4483 between he and I.' Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the
4484 nearest stenographer. I just don't know. But do you know what I'm driving at, at all?"
4485 "Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. "But you're wrong about that hating business. I
4486 mean about hating football players and all. You really are. I don't hate too many guys.
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4487 What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at
4488 Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while--I admit it--but it
4489 doesn't last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn't see them, if they didn't
4490 come in the room, or if I didn't see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort
4491 of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them."
4492 Mr. Antolini didn't say anything for a while. He got up and got another hunk of
4493 ice and put it in his drink, then he sat down again. You could tell he was thinking. I kept
4494 wishing, though, that he'd continue the conversation in the morning, instead of now, but
4495 he was hot. People are mostly hot to have a discussion when you're not.
4496 "All right. Listen to me a minute now . . . I may not word this as memorably as I'd
4497 like to, but I'll write you a letter about it in a day or two. Then you can get it all straight.
4498 But listen now, anyway." He started concentrating again. Then he said, "This fall I think
4499 you're riding for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted
4500 to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole
4501 arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking
4502 for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their
4503 own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up
4504 before they ever really even got started. You follow me?"
4505 "Yes, sir."
4506 "Sure?"
4507 "Yes."
4508 He got up and poured some more booze in his glass. Then he sat down again. He
4509 didn't say anything for a long time.
4510 "I don't want to scare you," he said, "but I can very clearly see you dying nobly,
4511 one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause." He gave me a funny look. "If I
4512 write something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it?"
4513 "Yes. Sure," I said. I did, too. I still have the paper he gave me.
4514 He went over to this desk on the other side of the room, and without sitting down
4515 wrote something on a piece of paper. Then he came back and sat down with the paper in
4516 his hand. "Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a
4517 psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel. Here's what he--Are you still with me?"
4518 "Yes, sure I am."
4519 "Here's what he said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly
4520 for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'"
4521 He leaned over and handed it to me. I read it right when he gave it to me, and then
4522 I thanked him and all and put it in my pocket. It was nice of him to go to all that trouble.
4523 It really was. The thing was, though, I didn't feel much like concentrating. Boy, I felt so
4524 damn tired all of a sudden.
4525 You could tell he wasn't tired at all, though. He was pretty oiled up, for one thing.
4526 "I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want
4527 to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose
4528 a minute. Not you."
4529 I nodded, because he was looking right at me and all, but I wasn't too sure what he
- title
- Chunk 5