The Book Read Online Free PDF Page A

sharpened pointer finger on. Sometimes, even the shadow that followed his feet felt irregular. But there, standing before a cacophony of pages that held order despite the disorder, he was freed from his incarceration of doubt. He lost himself and found himself in the thousands upon thousands of sandy pages and printed words that covered the five square feet of wall space behind the toilet. He scanned them slowly as if searching for truth. Searching for wisdom in a single word.
    He saw so many. The word vertigo . The word triumph . The word bliss . The word infantile . He saw the words retraction and conglomerate , God and sacrilegious . He saw the word, finality . He saw the word -
    Holden slipped on the floor and caught himself on the toilet paper holder. It tore free from the 100% post-consumer recycled content divider walls. Fragments of the composite plastic material rattled on the floor of the stall and the toilet flushed as his shadow passed over the fixture’s cyclopean eye. Inebriated men at the urinals were laughing, but he didn’t hear them. Holden pushed himself terribly close to the toilet until he could see it again. See the word that had his heart cycling in erratic disagreement. On the haphazard, paper-coated wall he found the word. Beside a modicum of sexually suggestive graffiti art, Holden Clifford had seen his name.
     
     
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    Holden was not a popular name. He could never seem to find it anywhere else in the world. He had only seen his name in digital script; and yet there it was in all its rare splendor. A piece of his favorite story had been pasted to a most inconsequential wall. The Catcher in the Rye . When Holden finally found his name again, his heart leapt. He had never seen a page from that book in person. The printed words were like manna to him and he devoured all two-hundred and seventy-seven with fervor. Each line was sheer delight and he read over them again the instant his studying eyes reached the awkward end. After the second read, Holden knew he had to read it again, but not because he was so overjoyed to finally be reading his favorite story from an actual piece of paper, printed with ink and touched by oily fingers. He had to read it again because something about the page was wrong.
    Whatever it was, he couldn’t define the source. It was like seeing a reflection in rippling water. It was right and at the same time it didn’t make sense. Then, in the middle of the third read, it hit him. The entire scene he was reading was new. That was why he needed so badly to read it again. It was new to him. There was something new on the page. He couldn’t tell if it was a phrase or a paragraph or a word or a sentence. No, it wasn’t something that small. It was the majority of it. The majority of the sentences on the wall he had never read before.
    One of the overlapping pages was dry and crusted, breaching the excerpt of The Catcher in the Rye like a hang nail waiting to be gnawed off. He blew delicately at the overhanging sheet and found enough space between it to know that the page wouldn’t be harmed if it peeled free. A crinkling, crackle; a delicate tear; and he could swiftly see the title along the ridge of the page. There was no question now. He was reading from The Catcher in the Rye , page two-hundred and forty-seven.
     
    they’re thinking and all. It really is. I kept trying not to yawn. It wasn’t that I was bored or anything – I wasn’t – but I was so damn sleepy all of a sudden.
    “ Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it’ll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it’ll fit and, maybe, what it won’t. After a while, you’ll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don’t suit you, aren’t becoming to you. You’ll begin to