In the shadow of a famous red hunting hat

A letter from J.D. Salinger, addressed to
a Marie Bouman,  who wrote to him
inquiring about other works by the
author.

Three of the books that currently reside on my shelf of absolute favourites are the three books by J.D. Salinger that sadly fall more than a little short of the acclaim or celebrity that The Catcher in the Rye receives. For months after finishing said book, I was genuinely under the impression that the only work ever published by Salinger was in fact the three-day chronicle of Holden Caulfield (an English teacher once spent a good twenty minutes or so talking about his life as a recluse, and how he failed to publish anything after The Catcher in the Rye). A great deal of interest was aroused upon discovering a collection of nine short stories by him in a bookstore, which under British publishing is called For Esme - With Love and Squalor, and American Nine Stories. I devoured it within a matter of days, and felt a sense of adoration for Salinger's knack for telling stories - a knack which I felt to be far from apparent in The Catcher in the Rye.

In my opinion, JD Salinger's books get better and better when they are read in the correct order, that is; The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An introduction. So here are quick reviews of the three unsung heroes of Salinger's career as a writer.

One final note: Before starting any of the following books, rid your conscience of either judgements reserved for J.D. Salinger or The Catcher In the Rye. Try to view these books as if they were by a completely different author. Do not get me wrong, there are many aspects of his writing style in the books that are Caulfield-esque, but these really are something else.

16 things to do before I turn 16

• Submit an article to Oh Comely Magazine

• Successfully play Brahms' sonata in F minor
• Learn shorthand

• Have a sleepover of which any idealist would be jealous

• Collate all my poems and draft them in anthology form

• Drink wine until I feel its velvety effect on my mind

• Finish the dozens of books that I started this year

• Run 1.6k in 6 minutes(ish) - okay this is starting to prove impossible, but oh well

• Check all bridges for signs of smoke (it's a euphemism)

• Get through the first stages of publishing a book of my poems 

• Plan a wondrous party that suits my annoyingly idealistic needs

• Write a short story

• Go to Hong Kong

• Decorate my room

• Spend a day listening to classical music and reading French poetry

• Successfully get into a(nother) school publication

Inventorium

So, if I am to be truthfully honest, as an immediate means of procrastination, I have decided to post the many lists that I keep about my person (or rather - in my hardback Moleskine when they desert the memory of "my person"). The lists will comprise subject matter such as; my bucket list, the (primarily 80's) movies I am in dire need of watching, the numerous works of literature that I am in dire need of doing, and my most recent (currently impalpable) creation: sixteen things to do in the ephemeral space of time left before I turn sixteen.

Now, being even more truthful in my honesty, I made this post chiefly so that I could see such an ostensively scholarly word as Inventorium in the pretty italicised font of my title. Well that confirms my worst fear that my need for style would someday supersede that of substance.

Why I have chosen to replace the generic "brutal honesty" with "truthful honesty" I fail to understand.

(With a lightly-scratched head) Signing off,

R. Louise

"Throw those curtains wide"

Today just feels so genuinely lovely.

It technically started at midnight (don't all days?), when my parents got home and I wished my mum a happy birthday. One dozy, daylight-induced slumber later and we're humbly apologising for "only getting a couple of gifts"and simultaneously preparing a breakfast of coffee, croissants and orange juice. She's insisted on doing nothing productive with her hours of daylight and so we're going out to dinner later.

So I've showered and dressed and for five minutes or so gazed into the clouds past a pair of superimposed tanned knees, with the opening tunes of Neutral Milk Hotel's album faintly playing to my left. Unfortunately my duties as birthday girl's daughter can be postponed no more and it is time to do the dishes.

I now reward myself with the browsing of my only two copies of Oh Comely, and allow myself the time to draft a letter in my head. Occasional visits from my sister - latest watercolour painting in hand - has caused me to decide upon her profession (as an illustrator), and I have mentally commissioned hundreds of works to keep her busy. I can only hope that she takes art next year.

We - my sister and I - have listened to One Day Like This at least - oh, I don't know - seven times in the last half hour. It is a mixture of the melody and lyrics that leave me with the indomitable impulse to think in terms of idealistic nostalgia, and produce a welling of tears in my voice. I can only speculate as to whether or not I shall feel the want to open up my half-empty notebook, and keep it so for a while.

Though it is well past midday, approaching two o' clock in fact, it feels like the sort of day where the afternoon will never come. And I sincerely hope it doesn't.

Couplets

It made terrific sense, of course,
to build a lift to scale my flaws!


With tea and sun that steep alike,
Summer's wistful wounds shall strike.


The epiphany, the revel! of thoughtful synapse
Precedes the fear of permanent lapse.

An open letter to any publication willing to take me

Dear perpetually-changing choice of periodical,

It has been my ambition to become a writer for a long time, or at least long enough for the aspiration to become painfully wistful; ever since I realised that books were in fact worth reading and an English teacher stared over twenty pairs of glazed eyes and told me that literature could be analysed. Coming across your publication brought about the comforting revelation that there was hope for people such as myself; aspiring writers who would love to be published in any way, yet secretly wanted the importance and freedom of an esteemed newspaper columnist.

My innate aversion to self-assurance has mostly taken its toll on my writing, or rather, the way I perceive it. I refuse to believe the idea that I am, well... a good writer, and it is just the genuine enjoyment of writing and the creative process that fuels this want to write. Despite my unwavering diffidence (does calling myself diffident make me sound like a hypocrite? - I think it does...) I really do (try to) live and breathe prose. In casual conversation I try to sound like the most intellectual and articulate person that my narrow vocabulary will allow me to be, and fail to acquiesce in the fact that I sound neither bookish nor worldly enough to be considered well-informed. My dream includes a short-lived life in Paris, quirky days as a reclusive poet in rural Britain, and the acting out of well-rehearsed, idealist images - most of which involve the spires of Oxford, a New Yorker's fire escape staircase and sallow hardback books of modern American literature. But my ultimate hope is that the ability to laugh at my sheer pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectual pursuits will never desert me.

I sincerely hope that my attached submission, as well as a prolific chain of other works to come, will be deemed good enough for your publication, and that it will be the beginning of success as a published author, which I intend to pursue.

Finitely yours,

R. Louise

Made-in-Chinatown

You ascend the stairs of a station underground and find a roof of panels of glass and mis-matched paper lanterns over your head before even reaching the top. Take two steps more and a myriad of bulbous red lanterns emerges and rippling satin sheets fly from roof to roof; an infinite meander of bloody gashes against the pure and cloudless sky. You see immediate, fiery blazes of festive red and gold as your ears try to make sense of the noise, all of which is under a pulsating, incandescent sun. The upbeat female voice of a Chinese pop song fades with every step you take and soon becomes the typically oriental sound of hammered string instruments and cymbal crashes, every gong in perfect syncopation. A miscellany of dialects and tones create a distortion that makes everything undefined. You find yourself at the end of a road you once thought ceaseless and, turning the corner, your eyes meet with a most welcome serenity. 

The street is practically desolate, where birdsong overpowers an accompaniment of modestly quiet conversation and anonymous footsteps. Sunshine crashes down on the brickpaved street, yet falls from the sky like the smooth cascade of a waterfall, uninterrupted by lanterns and table umbrellas like it was mere seconds ago. To the right of you are the wrought iron gates of the Sri Mariamman temple, and to the left are several shophouses and small venders. But this paradisal avenue soon bashfully diminishes to nothing, and a reluctant pair of feet are dragged into a half-turn and find themselves going back the way they came. 

Tranquility, as it seems, has done something in the act of clearing your mind, and when viewing what was once a perturbing chaos around you with a fresh pair of eyes, it begins to make visual sense. Decorative tassels of red and gold, purple and green hang in uniform decorum on the walls of a shop display, stubborn and strong in their will to stay inanimate, yet a few of the threads give way to the breeze once in a while, in a dance of spontaneous whimsy. Hours and hours worth of queuing shrouds from the onlooker the source of the pungent, smoky smell of meat cooking in honey glazes. An antique rickshaw stands before an homage to its heritage. Silenced by time's unforgiving wave of impairment, the tarnished paintwork and shallow scratches on the now-motionless wheels are the only things that speak for its past, and the lives of the people that were once carried by it. Above your head are rows of umbrellas lining the streets, most of them with the burden of a company’s branding trademark. The once-crimson hue of the sturdy fabric has sacrificed itself to sunlight's fading properties, so that the sweaty, panting tourist is granted a moment of shade. 

The backstreets of Chinatown, the dark, tiled paths that live in the constant shadow of arched alleyways, have a completely different ambience. Hardware stores and shop displays dedicated to faux-Ming-Dynasty ceramics replace the mass-produced souvenirs and three-for-ten-dollar artifacts. Occasional puffs of cigarette smoke thicken the atmosphere from time to time, but other than that the air is clear and bleak.

The hours of scorching midday sun are nearing to an end as you tread the last of your footsteps that will contribute towards the teeming, syncopated rhythm of Chinatown. There comes a point where the steps you take propel you down as well as forwards, as you find yourself descending into the hole in the ground that started your journey.

Blighty

My first week in England for the first time in a year is closing to an end. I'm lounging about the sofa bed in my grandma's guest room all day because of stomach cramps and what-have-you, which I have mostly managed to sleep off in a painless bout of hourly naps. And after convincing my ever-fretful grandma that I can in fact sleep with mild, explicable pains without dying, and can in fact construct a cheese sandwich without the serrated edges grating at my (currently intact) cuticles, I am in fact home alone for an hour or so. A hundred minutes of solitude, I think to my slow-witted self.

So I have dosed the pain off into the midday hours, and I now attempt to keep bread/crisp crumbs off the bed as I single-handedly hold open my copy of The Help, which I am about halfway through. The speed at which I am suddenly getting through this book is a genuine surprise to me. I'll try to string together a draft of a review while I'm at it.

By the late afternoon They're back from shopping and I have on me a frumpy grey jumper, my indian floral trousers and my hair's in a bun that says "I don't care what amount of time has passed since I last looked presentable, but at least I've been reading more than you." (Yes I have suddenly begun to personify hairstyles - and become complacently condescending). I've made an attempt to write that review. But I've gone off on a worthless tangent before I have even got to drawing the curve of my critique. I can't think how to analyse and articulate like I once considered with stupid complacency that I once thought I had the capacity to do. With bigoted arrogance I'm showing complete disregard for the nagging voice of my intellectual honesty. I suddenly feel like I know very little about the world, or indeed the area of expertise that I would love to pride myself in having estimable talent in.

Sabbath

Folded, covered arms across my chest. I huddle in a slight shiver as we cross the road. Just a two-hour service. Two hours where I have to pretend to listen with attentive ears and a graceful smile, while my atheist mind can wonder. I can ponder over how to write my review of The Help, now that I'm finished with it. 

Wrinkly hands and cheeks regularly pass my own in a pre-service gathering, all of which I meet with obligation and feigned attentiveness. Politeness, if you will. Words pass over me in the form of monotonous voices, words of praise, words that speak of a lifetime of dedication, for something that does not even exist. It makes me want to scream. The minutes pass by in a fumble of fleeting eyes and hands that clumsily search for the right page of the hymn book, a dormant brain that improvises with the organists playing and melismatic words that I am ill-informed about. 

A lady in clerical robes walks towards a book sermons and begins what I think was a half-hour session of preaching. From what I actually took in it appeared that she was talking about the gospel; how it is not eternal damnation that we should be focusing on, but the do-gooding that will guarantee us a place in heaven (no idea why I use the first person plural here). But most importantly, she talked of the need to convince others to become christians such as themselves. This was the point where I was truly screaming "bullshit" in my own head. I wonder if the lady ever considered that a non-believer sat amongst her congregation, doing whatever the mental equivalent is of shaking one's head as she spoke. I couldn't bear to look her in the eye, so instead I stared meekly at the bottom of the pew in front of me. A tiny shred of sallow paper lay dusty on the wooden floor, and I thought to myself, "I am going to learn so much more about the world, so much more truth in that single piece of paper that lies unacknowledged on the floor than the lady I am listening to. Unlike the lady, the paper is not tainted by the ink of man-made doctrine and dogma. Why should I listen to someone who has assumed the truth in what she heard as a girl from other ladies who have believed in the same thing since they were girls because they were taught so? Why should I, when before me stand millions of atoms that show so much more integrity and intelligence in order and form than we can ever assimilate with our own minds? When I see rows of folded hands that are so clearly the product of eons of evolution, the greatest design of all? When invisible - proven - waves of light travel millions of miles from the sun and adorn the dark rings of wooden floorboards and cast shadows from the legs of chairs? All of these have been proven to us-  an absolute explanation of what is there and where it comes from is there for all of us to see and understand - and yet we still listen to the lady at the altar who tells us that it all came about six days of intelligent design by a higher power of mercy that our world is so void of.