Stream of Consciousness Passages
Passage #1
"I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. My grandfather from Detroit, that keeps calling out the numbers of the streets when you ride on a goddamn bus with him, and my aunts- I have about fifty aunts- and all my lousy cousins. What a mob'd be there. They all came when Allie died, the whole goddamn stupid bunch of them. I have this one stupid aunt with halitosis that kept saying how peacefully he looked lying there, D.B. told me. I wasn't there. I was still in the hospital. I had to go to the hospital and all after I hurt my hand. Anyway, I kept worrying that I was getting pneumonia, with all those hunks of ice in my hair, and that I was going to die. I felt sorry as hell for my mother and father. Especially my mother, because she still isn't over my brother Allie yet. I kept picturing her not knowing what to do with all my suits and athletic equipment and all. The only good thing, I knew she wouldn't let old Phoebe come to my goddamn funeral because she was only a little kid. That was the only good part. Then I thought about the whole bunch of them sticking me in a goddamn cemetery and all, with my name on this tombstone and all. Surrounded by dead guys. Boy, when you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when your dead? Nobody."
–page
154-155
"D.B.
isn't as bad as the rest of them, but he keeps asking me a lot of questions,
too. He drove over last
Saturday with this English babe that's in this new picture he's writing.
She was pretty affected, but very good-looking.
Anyway, one time when she went to the ladies' room way the hell down in
the other wing, D.B. asked me what I thought about all this stuff I just
finished telling you about. I
didn't know what the hell to say. If
you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it.
I'm sorry I told so many people about it.
About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about it. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance.
I think I even miss that goddamn Maurice.
It's funny. Don't ever
tell anybody anything. If you
do, you start missing everybody."
–page
213-214
"Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. I'd hold onto the banister and all, with this blood trickling out of the side of my mouth a little at a time. What I'd do, I'd walk down a few floors- holding onto my guts, blood leaking all over the place-and then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors, he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice to leave him alone. But I'd plug him anyway."
–page
104
"I
started toying with the idea, while I kept standing there, of giving old Jane a
buzz- I mean calling her long distance at B.M., where she went, instead of
calling up her mother to find out when she was coming home. You weren't supposed
to call students up late at night, but I had it all figured out.
I was going to tell whoever answered the phone that I was her
uncle. I was going to say her
aunt had just got killed in a car accident and I had to speak to her
immediately. It would've
worked, too. The only reason I
didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood.
If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right."
–page
63
Passage
#5
"This next part I don't remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, so it would split his goddamn throat open. Only, I missed. I didn't connect All I did was sort of get him on the side of the head or something. It probably hurt him a little bit, but not as much as I wanted. It probably would've hurt him a lot, but I did it with my right hand, and I can't make a good fist with that hand. On account of that injury I told you about."
–page
43