Latest / Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship / The Catcher in the Rye Ch. 16.1: If a Body Catch a Body Coming Through the Rye | Banned Books Comedy

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The Catcher in the Rye Ch. 16.1: If a Body Catch a Body Coming Through the Rye | Banned Books Comedy · Banned Camp: Banned Books, Comedy, and Free Speech vs. Censorship

0:03
Welcome to Band Camp.
0:04
I'm Jennifer.
0:06
I'm Dan, and this is a podcast where we read band books and try to figure out why they were banned in the first place.
This season we are reading a fantastic book called The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger.
And you can consider this a quick spoiler warning because Jennifer is about to start reading from the book out.
Loud word for word.
But if you're new here, you're totally fine.
Starting out here, we're gonna get you oriented real quick.
Now you're probably gonna get confused, and if you do, that's okay, because I guarantee we're gonna be confused too because we've never read this book either and that's why we have a secret weapon.
Let's roll 'em in here right now.
he comes.
this guy.
he comes.
a fact checking robot.
Handsome bucket of bolts.
Look at you.
Go.
buddy.
Boy.
Why don't you fill us in on where we left off last time in the catcher in the rye.
Previously on Band Camp Holden Kauf discussed Romeo and Juliette with a nun at a lunch counter.
Gave her $10.
He couldn't really afford accidentally blue smoke in her face and then watched her leave.
Dan suggested the chapter would've been better if it involved sex with nuns.
Jennifer's face was noted.
There's a song that children sing without knowing what it means.
Adults hear it and feel something they can't explain.
I have been waiting 16 chapters for someone to sing it.
I suspect the weight is almost over.
Take it away, Jennifer.
Woo.
Thank you robot.
And with that being said, scary book people.
Let's begin Chapter 16 of JD Salinger's, the catcher in the rye.
After I had my breakfast, it was only around noon and I wasn't meeting old Sally till two o'clock, so I started taking this long walk.
He is kind of forced into it 'cause there's not a taxi driver in New York that'll pick this goofy kid up.
I couldn't stop thinking about those two nuns.
I kept thinking about that beat up old straw basket.
They went around collecting money with when they weren't teaching school.
I kept trying to picture my mother or somebody.
Or my Aunt Sally or Sally Hayes's, crazy mother, standing outside some department store and collecting dough for poor people in a beat up old straw basket.
that would never happen.
It'd be too embarrassing for them.
They wouldn't do that.
Yeah, they seem a little more high class, It was hard to picture out each, he says.
It was hard to picture.
Yeah, it wouldn't happen.
Not so much my mother, but those other two.
My aunt's pretty charitable.
She does a lot of Red Cross work and all, but she's very well dressed and when she does anything charitable, she's always well dressed and has lipstick on and all that crap.
Boy, that brings me back to a lot of scenes from movies or books where the high society ladies all get together in like a living room and they're all dressed up and they talk about giving to charity.
Like didn't that happen in, uh.
To Kill a Mockingbird, I I, I need a moment.
Jennifer remembered something from season one, voluntarily without flashcards.
That's anyway.
She's right to kill a Mockingbird, the Missionary Society Tee at Aunt Alexandra's house, the ladies of Macomb sit around worrying about the bruna of fictional African tribe, thousands of miles away while Tom Robinson's family suffers right there in their own town.
Charity as performance compassion with a dress code.
Thank you robot.
I mean, it's great.
I guess they're raising money, but like the thing that just had Katherine Hegel in Deep Water 'cause she did some animal charity thing at Mar-a-Lago.
And it's like, why do I know about that? Like, do you're supposed to do these charitable things? On you.
You know, like just write a huge check.
use your celebrity for for good.
Then you don't have to like leak something to the press that, wow.
Did you hear what Katherine Hegel? He really raised a lot of money for this dog charity.
Okay.
Thanks Katherine.
You got it.
I'll let you know when I do something memorable again in the future.
Oh, by the way, don't put in that this was at Mar-a-Lago.
'cause that'll probably make me look bad.
Too late.
You didn't say off the record.
Yeah.
The charity is Big Dog Ranch Rescue largest no-kill cage-free dog rescue in the southeastern United States based in Loxahatchee Groves, Florida.
The event Katherine Hegel attended was their annual wine women and shoes fundraiser.
I don't like it.
Wine Women and shoes.
Come on.
Why Co-chaired by Laura Trump.
Held at Mar-a-Lago raised $5.5
million this year.
It was Hegel's first public appearance in two years.
Woo.
And Trump rubbed his ass on a big dog charity and it really got me mad because I donated to this charity I think they were funneling money.
This is just my opinion.
Don't sue me, Don, okay? Just my opinion.
I could be wrong, Don.
You should look into that.
That's novel too.
Sometimes you make a mistake, Smart move, Dan.
Nice cover for the record.
Big Dog Ranch Rescue does real work.
Over 85,000 dogs rescued Charity Navigator gives them high marks.
That said, IRS filings show nearly $1.9
million spent at Trump property since 2014.
Laura Trump co-chairs the events held at her father-in-law's resort.
If that arrangement sounds familiar, the Trump Foundation was shut down for the same pattern, but I'm sure this one's different.
It always is.
Woo.
why did Katherine Hegel did, did she rub her ass on Trump's carpet? Oh my God, his carpet.
Imagine.
Imagine Katherine, Nigel sitting on her butt.
He's just, you know, humans can't do that.
But dogs really have that move down, don't they? They just flop that ass down and, don't do that.
Katherine Hegel.
If you're gonna do something good, I applaud you for wanting to help dogs, but if I said it once, I've said it a thousand times.
Do not wipe your ass on Carps trumpet Trump's carpet, she says.
T I couldn't picture her doing anything for charity if she had to wear black clothes and no lipstick while she was doing it, and old Sally Hayes mother, Jesus Christ, the only way she could go around with a basket collecting dough would be if everybody kissed her ass for her when they made a contribution.
If they just dropped their dough in her basket and walked away without saying anything to her and ignoring her, she'd quit in about an hour.
She'd get bored, she'd hand in her basket and then go someplace swanky for lunch.
That's what I liked about those nuns.
You could tell for one thing that they never went anywhere swanky for lunch.
It made me so damn sad when I thought about it.
They're never going anywhere swanky for lunch or anything.
I knew it wasn't too important that they wouldn't go to swanky lunch.
Right? But it made me sad.
Anyway, Well, no.
Why does that make him sad? If that's what he likes about them? it's a struggle where he's.
Lucky that he had, like he knows he's entitled, kind of.
He has a little entitlement going that he can afford all this stuff, Yeah.
right? But at the same time, he likes it.
But then he'll do stuff like where he'll try to hide his suitcases.
So other people don't see how fancy his suitcases are.
yeah, he gets embarrassed.
He got embarrassed to give the nuns money.
It was embarrassing to him.
But that's not gonna stop him from having a really good breakfast or having the fancy suitcases or whatever.
'cause he's still entitled to that stuff and he just maybe wishes everyone else would be at his level.
It's very conf.
It's very hard being hold.
And I bet in his head I mean, that's, that's, the point of the book, right, is like he's trying to figure things out in his place and everyone else's place.
He's trying to figure out the world.
That's, uh, that's a tough one.
We're always, I feel like we're always a little bit hard on Holden.
mean, he might be six feet tall, but he is still just a kid.
Holden, if you're listening, we don't even know.
We don't know what's going on.
Like, it's not like you ever figure life out, really.
Right.
Like just listen to this podcast.
You'll see two confused adults all the time.
I started walking over toward Broadway just for the hell of it, because I hadn't been over there in years.
Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open on Sunday.
There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe called Little Shirley Beans.
It was a, that's a cute name for a dog.
Little Shirley Beans.
Come over here and drag your ass on my carpet.
Little Shirley Beans.
It was a very hard record to get.
It was about a little kid that wouldn't go out of the house because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed.
I heard it at Pencey.
A boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn't sell it.
It was a very old, terrific record that this colored girl singer Estelle Fletcher made about 20 years ago.
She sings it very Dixieland in whorehouse, and it doesn't sound at all mushy if a white girl was singing it.
She'd make it sound cute as hell, but old Estelle Fletcher knew what the hell she was doing, and it was one of the best records I ever heard.
I figured I'd buy it in some store that was open on Sunday And then I take it up to the park with me.
It was Sunday and Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays.
I knew where she hung out mostly.
It wasn't as cold as it was the day before, but the sun still wasn't out and it wasn't too nice for walking.
But there was one nice thing This family that you could tell just came out of some church.
Were walking right in front of me, a father, a mother, and a little kid.
About six years old.
They looked sort of poor.
The father had on one of those pearl gray hats that poor guys wore a lot.
When they went to look sharp.
He and his wife were just walking along talking, not paying any attention to their kid.
The kid was swell.
He was walking in the street instead of the sidewalk, but right next to the curb he was making out.
Like he was walking in a very straight line the way kids do and the whole time he kept singing and humming.
you can tell that Holden has a soft spot for kids.
Yeah.
He likes the kids better and he is like, why they're ignoring the kid, you know? And again, I think you mentioned it a while ago that kids aren't phony.
No.
They don't know how to be there's no, there's, why would they ever be? Right They're again, they're just like we just said, they're trying to figure out life.
I'm telling you, hold it.
Kids don't get life.
You don't get life.
We don't get life.
Nobody gets this.
Don't make it so hard.
This is all a crapshoot.
You understand? Boy, Boy.
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, oh, Ooh.
Ooh, I always wondered where they get this name.
He had a pretty little voice too.
He was just singing for the hell of it.
You could tell the car zoomed by brake 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 anymore.
What, what is this song? It sounds very morbid.
Catching a body.
What? Through what? Rye? What? What the hell are they talking about? I'm so confused.
It's a poem, a very old one, and no, I'm not explaining it yet.
You'll get there.
Broadway was mobbed and messy.
It was Sunday and only about 12 o'clock, but it was mobbed anyway, but.
Everybody was on their way to the movies.
The Paramount or the Astro 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.
He doesn't like it when people dress up or goes to the movies.
He hates the movies.
Remember? Yeah.
Why is he doing this? Why is he taking old Sally to a movie date? Maybe 'cause that's what you do.
Oh, you, you take a teenage girl you're trying to impress to a tavern in the middle of the night in the seat as part of New York City, Jennifer.
Geez.
ah, that's right.
I forgot.
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 the hell outta 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 goddamn Broadway fast enough.
I was lucky.
The first 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 drug store and I went in.
I figured I'd give old Jayna Buzz and see if she was home for vacation yet.
So I went in a phone booth and called her up.
Whoa.
He did it.
he did it, he's doing what he wants to do.
He's calling that girl he likes.
Look at that, Holden.
Very proud of you.
Finally, you're thinking with your head.
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 at all with her.
I'm not crazy about talking to girls', mothers on the phone anyway.
I should have 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, Good job, Holden.
Way to go.
I, I agree with him.
Like he, he just, it's kind of like he's taking care of himself.
He wanted to call Jane because he felt good about the record, and he is like, ah, I feel good.
Let's call Jane.
And then the mom answers, he's like, Ugh, I still had those damn tickets, so I bought a paper and looked up to see what shows were playing.
On account of, it was Sunday.
There was only about three shows playing.
So what I did was I went over and bought two orchestra seats for I know my love.
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 Lus were in it and all the Lus The hell are the Lus it sounds like celebrities of the time.
Never heard of them.
The Lutz, Alfred Lund and Lynn Fontaine married couple biggest names on Broadway from the twenties through the fifties.
Seeing them perform was the thing Rich New Yorkers did to prove they were cultured, which given what Holden just said about his mother and charity work is probably not a coincidence.
she liked shows that are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all I don't like any shows very much if you wanna know the truth.
They're not as bad as movies, but there's certainly nothing to rave about.
And 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.
I think that's a key line.
I think the reason Holden acts, how Holden acts is because he's trying to act the opposite of how an actor acts.
because he thinks actors are fake.
This isn't how real people are.
So Holden is going to quote, act like a, a real human.
Oh yeah.
Like that's his whole persona is trying to act how he thinks a normal person acts.
yeah, the whole idea of acting kind of is what's bugging him, right? He wants people to be real.
Mm.
And if any actor's really good, you can always tell he knows he's good and that spoils it.
But he really has a problem with everything He, he think he just thinks too much.
you take, sir Lawrence Olivier, for example.
I saw him in Hamlet DB took Phoebe and I to see it last year.
He treated us to lunch first and then he took us.
That sounds like a nice state.
What's he complaining about? You know what he should be? He should be some type of critic.
That is his perfect job in life.
It's not that hard.
You just have to have an opinion, and he's got opinions coming out his ass.
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 Lawrence Olivier.
That's all.
He has a terrific voice and he is a hell of a handsome guy and he is very nice to watch when he is walking or dueling or something, But he wasn't at all the way DB said Hamlet was.
He was too much like a goddamn general instead of a sad, screwed up type guy.
The best part of the whole picture was when old, old Ophelia, when old Ophelia's brother, the one that gets in the dual with Hamlet at the very end While the father kept giving him a lot of advice, old Ophelia, I'm sorry, old Ophelia was sort of horsing around with her brother taking his daddy or out of the holster and teasing him all the while he was trying to look interested in the bowl his father was shooting.
That was nice.
Okay, so.
A very real moment, I suppose.
No talking.
It's just her messing around and again, it's like Ophelia's kind of acting like a kid there.
Yeah, that's true.
I love every time he says old.
I know.
It is like every story he tells, every character is basically like ley and strad ladder, Yeah.
they're his buddies.
Right.
take old Jesus, for example.
He was trying to have a nice day, but his disciples let him down.
It was lousy in the park.
It wasn't too cold, but the sun still wasn't out And there didn't look like there was anything in the park except dog crap.
And globs of spit and cigar butts from old men.
And the benches all looked like they'd be wet if you sat on them.
Gross.
He paints such a beautiful picture.
It made you depressed and every once in a while for no reason.
You got goose flesh while you walked.
It didn't seem at all like Christmas was coming soon.
It didn't seem like anything was coming.
End of section.
Wow.
That's dark.
That's dark Colden.
Hey, he's at the park.
Why don't you scroll on over to the lagoon? See what those crackers are doing, buddy? Boy.
It's time for PPP Problematic Points to Ponder.
What, if anything, would be considered ban worthy in this chapter? let's stop jacking around here.
Jennifer.
Let's put ourselves in the mind of the banners.
Yes, I know we're 16 chapters in, haven't figured anything out, any reason, not one reason what could be band worthy, but that now let's really, really focus.
Okay.
I got nothing.
It's so, it's so stupid.
There's nothing in this to ban.
Nothing in, yeah, nothing in that.
I mean, he talked highly of the nuns.
What, what else could you want? Absolutely.
Dogs.
What are we talking? That was us bringing the dog scooching their ass on Trump's floor.
Anything band worthy was Robots log thoughts on records, R Fields and the kid on the curb that nobody was watching.
Holden walked through New York on a Sunday morning still thinking about those nuns, not about what they said about what they ate.
Toast and coffee.
No lipstick, no swanky lunch.
He gave them $10 and wished it had been more, and then went to meet a girl he doesn't even like.
He bought a record called Little Shirley Beans for Phoebe $5.
It made him happier than anything has in 16 chapters, not because of the song, because it was for someone who would love it without pretending to.
Then a kid walked out of a church with his parents, six years old, walking right on the curb next to traffic while cars screeched past him singing if a body catch a body coming through the rye.
His parents weren't watching.
The kid didn't care.
He was just singing for the hell of it, and Holden stopped being depressed just like that for the first time in two days.
Jennifer and Dan didn't know what the song meant.
Neither of them realized they just heard the line the entire novel is built around.
They will...
in due time.
He also finally called Jane, the person he has wanted to talk to for 16 chapters.
Her mother answered.
He hung up.
The boy you can spot a phony from across a crowded room.
Could not say four words to someone's mom.
Dan said something worth remembering.
He said, Holden acts the way he acts because he's trying to be the opposite of how actors act.
He thinks actors are fake.
So Holden performs realness, which is its own kind of performance.
Which might be the phoniest thing of all.
Somewhere this week a kid is walking on a curb, singing something for the hell of it, not performing, not pretending, not being watched, and somewhere nearby.
Someone a lot older is noticing and feeling a little less lost because of it.
The scary book, people notice those kids.
That's why this book makes certain people nervous.
Not the language, not the cigarettes.
The part where a teenager recognizes something sacred in a 6-year-old singing on a curb and can't find it anywhere else.
Standing by for today's new segment with Beowulf Rocklin.
Hello, Jen.
Hello Dan.
Hello.
Scary book.
People, you know, there has been a parade of stories, positive stories recently, from Red States about, you know, book bans, libraries and so forth, and I'm afraid I gotta bring you another one.
It's from the great state of Montana and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Upheld provisions last week blocking Montana from enforcing a ban on drag story hours and performances in public schools and libraries.
So you see what they tried to do in Montana as they tried to say, oh no, we don't like drag, story hour.
'cause you know, God, you know, reading to kids out loud.
Oh, hideous.
That would be awful.
Um.
There was a breadth of hope.
It's like drag racing.
No, no.
Drag queens cancel.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
So this is the latest ruling.
It's an ongoing lawsuit about this, law.
Just a few months after, governor Greg Gian 40 signed the ban into law, by the way, I just have to take a quick aside here and note that, governor Greg Gian 40, you may remember him because when he was running for.
Congress like six, seven years back.
He body slammed Oh that.
I remember had, he pled guilty for that.
So I like to refer to him as Governor, body Slam, you know, I mean, if you like professional wrestlers as your leaders.
great.
me, not so much, but this is a bill that he signed.
Anyway.
so he's still active in politics.
He's imp.
He used to be a congressman.
Now he's the governor of the whole state of Montana.
that insane? he has advanced, he has not suffered as a result of body slamming That reporter from The Guardian.
They, they like that sort of thing.
Trump, are you hearing this? Trump? if Trump, you gotta work on getting, uh, those kinkle ears in shape, man.
This is how you win.
Next time you start throwing people around.
Yeah, he's got some workouts to do.
I think maybe if they get, you know, they're gonna have like a mixed martial arts, fight at the White House, I think.
So maybe some of those guys can help him out.
To tell him the right workouts to do or something like that.
And maybe he can get to the point where he's able to body slam, someone, I mean, maybe not a really big, but maybe, you know, a little kind of like, I've gotta practice.
Where's Marco? Get little Marco in here.
excellent, excellent.
Yeah, Marco Rubio, great place to start in terms of body slamming, maybe, Steven Miller, who's also very willowy, that, and then work your way up to Lindsey Graham and eventually, you know, get all the way up to, Steven ch like his, his press guy.
And then, then I think you're, then you're at the top level.
But yeah, he could take some lessons, but, I think we all could take some lessons from the fact that they're, they're putting a stay on wall that would remove drag queen story hour.
And I, and this is a phenomenon.
I think that, that it's wonderful.
I mean, think about like you're a little kid and this this character that is like flashy and over the top and sticks in your memory and they're reading a book to you and that's gonna stick with you for the rest of your life.
And that's going to inspire you with a love of reading.
And that the fact that that can take place in a place like Montana is a very positive, thing.
I hope that there is more success in the courts and that they keep on going with this because it's anyone who reads to kids is doing a service.
They ought to have, you know how they have those parking spaces for veterans, you know, thank you for your service sort of thing.
Yeah.
thing should be if you've done a story hour at a public library for kids, if you do a drag story hour, there should be a special parking place just for you at the front of the library, right by the entrance.
All blinged out glitter, feather boas wrapped around the poles.
It'd be nice.
I think that would be, if you'll pardon the term, fabulous.
Look at this guy.
Everybody.
Once again, be Wolf Rocklin.
Wherever you find your podcast, good news for lefties, go check him out.
Much appreciated guys.
From band worthy to binge worthy.
He was a young Marine.
She didn't care about convention.
They made a life together.
Then one night the Marine died, and then the death investigation took a wild, unexpected, and utterly bizarre turn.
I'm Josh Menowitz, and this is Trace of Suspicion, an all new podcast from Dateline Search Trace of Suspicion to start listening now.
Simone Sanders.
Townsend and I have known each other for more than a decade, tussling over politics and policy when she worked in the White House and I reported on it, and now we're friends and colleagues and on our new podcast, Ms.
Now presents Clock It.
We are positioning ourselves at the intersection of culture and politics.
Clock.
It is where we talk about what we see and hear in the news, so you can start to clock it too.
Ms.
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Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes drop Thursdays.
All right.
We've caused enough literary chaos for one day.
Scary book people.
If you want the fun to keep going, follow us on Blue Sky.
Just head on over to bandcamp podcast.com/bluesky.
And remember, that's banned with two ends.
And look just like the Trump administration, we're not exactly above bribing you to get what we want.
So follow us there, drop your handle on that page, and we'll send you a little something something.
I think you'll like it.
Yes.
Little quid pro quo.
Bandcamp is produced and hosted by Dan Schultz and me, Jennifer Davis.
All media used in this episode falls under the protection of fair use, and finally, America isn't what it used to be.
So be careful out there and resist when it matters.