If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I live, and what my last lousy job was like and what I’ve been doing since, and all that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my last few jobs have been real classified and my old bosses would file about two lawsuits apiece if I told anything pretty secret about them. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything.
Anyway, I got to thinking that I should do something with myself. I asked D.B. about it, he’s my brother and all, and he said I should write you since he knows you and he could put in a good word. Which just killed me, I’m not too crazy about working anyway, but after a while I sort of came around on the idea. Now I don’t want to end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer, that’s why D.B. suggested you first off. He started going on about resumes and interviews, he kept asking me a lot of questions, too, all that is just too much. Of course I can’t even bother with resumes, if there’s one thing I hate it’s resumes. Don’t even mention them to me.
Respectfully yours,
Holden Caulfield
hcaulfield@penceyprep.edu
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
April 27, 2010
To Whom It May Concern,
Call me Ishmael. Some days ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me in the places I had been haunting, I thought I would gather myself up a little and see about the prospects of employment. It is a way I have of driving off the dullness of leisure and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before factories and markets, and following the lonely career man into his place of business; and especially whenever my liveliness gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically putting myself to work--then, I account it high time to enter into stable employment as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to employment. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards work as me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by office buildings as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets bustle with business. Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by skyscrapers, and cooled by breezes, which whip around the famed houses of industry. Look at the crowds of idle-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by White-hall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in work-day reveries. Some leaning against the racks of a fashionable boutique; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in windows of the tallest buildings, as if striving to get a still better skyward peep. I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the job itself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where it rolled its accomplished vastness; the unimaginable, nameless enchantments of the vocation; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand industrious sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish.
By reason of these things, then, the employment is welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swing open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the job, and, midmost of them all, one grand bright light, like a star in the air.
Sincerely,
Ishmael
ishmael@pequod.com
Call me Ishmael. Some days ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me in the places I had been haunting, I thought I would gather myself up a little and see about the prospects of employment. It is a way I have of driving off the dullness of leisure and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before factories and markets, and following the lonely career man into his place of business; and especially whenever my liveliness gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically putting myself to work--then, I account it high time to enter into stable employment as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to employment. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards work as me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by office buildings as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets bustle with business. Its extreme down-town is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by skyscrapers, and cooled by breezes, which whip around the famed houses of industry. Look at the crowds of idle-gazers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by White-hall, northward. What do you see?--Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in work-day reveries. Some leaning against the racks of a fashionable boutique; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in windows of the tallest buildings, as if striving to get a still better skyward peep. I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.
Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the job itself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where it rolled its accomplished vastness; the unimaginable, nameless enchantments of the vocation; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand industrious sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish.
By reason of these things, then, the employment is welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swing open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the job, and, midmost of them all, one grand bright light, like a star in the air.
Sincerely,
Ishmael
ishmael@pequod.com
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