Properties
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- 2026-01-30T03:41:20.744Z
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- time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing.
He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." He had a
pretty little voice, too. He was just singing for the hell of it, you could tell. The cars
zoomed by, brakes screeched all over the place, his parents paid no attention to him, and
he kept on walking next to the curb and singing "If a body catch a body coming through
the rye." It made me feel better. It made me feel not so depressed any more.
Broadway was mobbed and messy. It was Sunday, and only about twelve o'clock,
but it was mobbed anyway. Everybody was on their way to the movies--the Paramount or
the Astor or the Strand or the Capitol or one of those crazy places. Everybody was all
dressed up, because it was Sunday, and that made it worse. But the worst part was that
you could tell they all wanted to go to the movies. I couldn't stand looking at them. I can
understand somebody going to the movies because there's nothing else to do, but when
somebody really wants to go, and even walks fast so as to get there quicker, then it
depresses hell out of me. Especially if I see millions of people standing in one of those
long, terrible lines, all the way down the block, waiting with this terrific patience for seats
and all. Boy, I couldn't get off that goddam Broadway fast enough. I was lucky. The first
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record store I went into had a copy of "Little Shirley Beans." They charged me five bucks
for it, because it was so hard to get, but I didn't care. Boy, it made me so happy all of a
sudden. I could hardly wait to get to the park to see if old Phoebe was around so that I
could give it to her.
When I came out of the record store, I passed this drugstore, and I went in. I
figured maybe I'd give old Jane a buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet. So I
went in a phone booth and called her up. The only trouble was, her mother answered the
phone, so I had to hang up. I didn't feel like getting involved in a long conversation and
all with her. I'm not crazy about talking to girls' mothers on the phone anyway. I
should've at least asked her if Jane was home yet, though. It wouldn't have killed me. But
I didn't feel like it. You really have to be in the mood for that stuff.
I still had to get those damn theater tickets, so I bought a paper and looked up to
see what shows were playing. On account of it was Sunday, there were only about three
shows playing. So what I did was, I went over and bought two orchestra seats for I Know
My Love. It was a benefit performance or something. I didn't much want to see it, but I
knew old Sally, the queen of the phonies, would start drooling all over the place when I
told her I had tickets for that, because the Lunts were in it and all. She liked shows that
are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts and all. I don't. I
don't like any shows very much, if you want to know the truth. They're not as bad as
movies, but they're certainly nothing to rave about. In the first place, I hate actors. They
never act like people. They just think they do. Some of the good ones do, in a very slight
way, but not in a way that's fun to watch. And if any actor's really good, you can always
tell he knows he's good, and that spoils it. You take Sir Laurence Olivier, for example. I
saw him in Hamlet. D.B. took Phoebe and I to see it last year. He treated us to lunch first,
and then he took us. He'd already seen it, and the way he talked about it at lunch, I was
anxious as hell to see it, too. But I didn't enjoy it much. I just don't see what's so
marvelous about Sir Laurence Olivier, that's all. He has a terrific voice, and he's a helluva
handsome guy, and he's very nice to watch when he's walking or dueling or something,
but he wasn't at all the way D.B. said Hamlet was. He was too much like a goddam
general, instead of a sad, screwed-up type guy. The best part in the whole picture was
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- Chunk 2