Holden Caulifield, Maria Fabiola and Gaffney

   After the late Feb post on the Macdowell sisters and Faulkner, it came to my attention (registered with me)  Margaret Qualley is the daughter of Andie Macdowell, was pussycat in Once upon a Time in Hollywood (gets in the car with Brad Pitt) and is now starring in My Salinger year with Sigourney Weaver and will soon be onscreen as Ginger Rogers. 

   And as this coincides with Maurine Corrigan review on NPR Fresh Air about new novel by Avila, We Run the Tides, I gotta go for this. Ive Read the Novel in three days and Eulabee may appropriate Holden Caulifield for legendary status in coming generations. But it is Maria Fabiola whose name is on almost every page of the novel as told by Eulabee.

    As late as 1978 I hadnt read Catcher in the Rye. In my mind it was something shady, maybe there was a discussion about masturbation, something taboo but of literary significance. I'd read several novels of Phillip Roth by then, knew of the corn cob rape in the Faulkner canon, so wasnt naive, just hadn't read Salinger. It was the great Baptist preacher and thinker, Carlyle Marney who came to Gaffney to talk to the local preachers about Watergate, integrity, and other high minded topics with political implications. I crashed the presentation. It was Marney who brought up if a body see a body coming through the Rye. A Biblical notion, almost comparable to a Jesus parable it turns out to be, Salinger as a secular apostle.

    And the fact Salinger would go to High school basketball games and study the crowd, his community and explore in his mind what their souls were like, the darker reaches as well as the light of humanity from the flesh and blood he encountered daily.

     I tried several ways to get to Margaret to see if we could have some email exchanges about My Year with Salinger, to no avail. But there is a very good interview with her online about Salinger, though it never became clear to me she read the novel. Still the role has made an impression on her.

     I hope somebody from the staff of the Indian Post, her Momma's hometown HS newspapeer can get to Marge as this is a great teachable moment not only about Salinger, but to introduce them especially the girls ( Andie Rosalie has three sisters and it appears from a cursory review of facebook every offspring to date of the four girls is female with the exception of Andie's son) to Eulabee, Fabiola and their pack in San Francisco turning 13 in the early 80s.

   Almost everything horribly embarassing happens to Eulabee over the course of the novel and the ending for me had a touch of that nineties movie about the impostor played by Matt Damon in the Talented Mr. Ripley.

    For your daughters or friends female read We run  the Tides. Will give you an unvarnished appreciation of the difficulties of coming of age of the gender that don't play college football.