I’m not really reading The Catcher in the Rye. I’m still reading The Goldfinch, and for now I seem to have conquered my serial book reading habit, because I am truly reading The Goldfinch, just The Goldfinch, and nothing but The Goldfinch,  so help me God. But it’s true that I’m studying The Catcher in the Rye with the ninth grade student I tutor, and while I know it well enough that I don’t need to reread it, it has certainly been on my mind lately.

I noticed something about The Catcher in the Rye that I’ve never noticed before. The first scene in the novel (other than the hinted-at scene in which Holden is talking to his psychologist) is the one in which Holden has just learned that he is being expelled and is walking to his teacher’s house to say goodbye, and he pauses on the edge of the football field during a game. Reading this scene for the millionth time, it occurred to me that this scene perfectly prefigures the “ambition” that Holden describes to Phoebe later in the novel – the one that gives the book its title. Holden imagines a group of children playing in a field of rye beside a cliff, and his job is to catch the children if they start to fall off the cliff. The opening of the novel – in which a group of “children” (i.e. high school football players) are playing on a field (of grass, not of rye), and just like in his fantasy Holden is standing on the periphery of the action. There’s even a reference to the field being on the top of a hill.

This weekend I cast on my next Palm Desert Winter tank three separate times. Each time something annoyed me about how the neckband was turning out, so I ripped it out and started over. This is the third attempt. It’s a deep red viscose/linen blend. The contrast color is a shiny pale pink. I think I’m going to love it once I can get the neckband to behave.

Yarn Along is, as always, hosted by Ginny on her blog, Small Things.

Happy Wednesday!