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- disturbance in chapel wasn't fit to go to Pencey. We tried to get old Marsalla to rip off
another one, right while old Thurmer was making his speech, but be wasn't in the right
mood. Anyway, that's where I lived at Pencey. Old Ossenburger Memorial Wing, in the
new dorms.
It was pretty nice to get back to my room, after I left old Spencer, because
everybody was down at the game, and the heat was on in our room, for a change. It felt
sort of cosy. I took off my coat and my tie and unbuttoned my shirt collar; and then I put
on this hat that I'd bought in New York that morning. It was this red hunting hat, with one
of those very, very long peaks. I saw it in the window of this sports store when we got out
of the subway, just after I noticed I'd lost all the goddam foils. It only cost me a buck.
The way I wore it, I swung the old peak way around to the back--very corny, I'll admit,
but I liked it that way. I looked good in it that way. Then I got this book I was reading
and sat down in my chair. There were two chairs in every room. I had one and my
roommate, Ward Stradlater, had one. The arms were in sad shape, because everybody
was always sitting on them, but they were pretty comfortable chairs.
The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake. They
gave me the wrong book, and I didn't notice it till I got back to my room. They gave me
Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very
good book. I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favorite author is my brother D.B., and
my next favorite is Ring Lardner. My brother gave me a book by Ring Lardner for my
birthday, just before I went to Pencey. It had these very funny, crazy plays in it, and then
it had this one story about a traffic cop that falls in love with this very cute girl that's
always speeding. Only, he's married, the cop, so be can't marry her or anything. Then this
girl gets killed, because she's always speeding. That story just about killed me. What I
like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. I read a lot of classical books, like
The Return of the Native and all, and I like them, and I read a lot of war books and
mysteries and all, but they don't knock me out too much. What really knocks me out is a
book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific
friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That
doesn't happen much, though. I wouldn't mind calling this Isak Dinesen up. And Ring
Lardner, except that D.B. told me he's dead. You take that book Of Human Bondage, by
Somerset Maugham, though. I read it last summer. It's a pretty good book and all, but I
wouldn't want to call Somerset Maugham up. I don't know, He just isn't the kind of guy
I'd want to call up, that's all. I'd rather call old Thomas Hardy up. I like that Eustacia Vye.
Anyway, I put on my new hat and sat down and started reading that book Out of
Africa. I'd read it already, but I wanted to read certain parts over again. I'd only read
about three pages, though, when I heard somebody coming through the shower curtains.
Even without looking up, I knew right away who it was. It was Robert Ackley, this guy
that roomed right next to me. There was a shower right between every two rooms in our
wing, and about eighty-five times a day old Ackley barged in on me. He was probably the
only guy in the whole dorm, besides me, that wasn't down at the game. He hardly ever
went anywhere. He was a very peculiar guy. He was a senior, and he'd been at Pencey the
whole four years and all, but nobody ever called him anything except "Ackley." Not even
Herb Gale, his own roommate, ever called him "Bob" or even "Ack." If he ever gets
married, his own wife'll probably call him "Ackley." He was one of these very, very tall,
round-shouldered guys--he was about six four--with lousy teeth. The whole time he
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