insignificance. Underneath the avid and enthusiastic persona is a mind that is petulant,
bored, and blase' about everything that does not touch the interests of the ego. The result
is an impression of overwhelming, undifferentiated banality. One is reminded of a
narrative voice like the following:
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I
was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and
all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield 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 parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything
personal about them. They're quite touchy about anything like that, especially my father.
[fn 5]
The Holden Caulfield of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye inhabited the world that
also belonged to George Bush, the world of the northeast prep schools of the 1940's.
Apart from the obvious parallels between George and Holden, there is the interesting
question of whether Bush might have a closer relation to this literary personage. In the
course of the errant Holden Caulfield's time in New York City, he takes a girlfriend to a
matinee theatre performance; during the intermission the girlfriend, named Sally, spots
"some jerk she knew on the other side of the lobby. Some guy in one of those very dark
grey flannel suits and one of those checkered vests. Strictly Ivy League. Big deal."
Holden recounts the later conversation between Sally and her friend: "You should've seen
him when old Sally asked him how he liked the play. He was the kind of a phony that
have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question. He stepped back,
and stepped right on the lady's foot behind him. He probably broke every toe in her body.
He said the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute
angels. Angels. For Chrissake. Angels. That killed me. Then he and Sally started talking
about a lot of people they both knew. It was the phoniest conversation you ever heard in
your life." "The worst part was, the jerk had one of those very phony, Ivy League voices,
one of those very tired, snobby voices. He sounded just like a girl. He didn't hesitate to
horn in on my date, the bastard. I even thought for a minute that he was going to get in
the goddam cab with us when the show was over, because he walked about two blocks
with us, but he said he had to meet a bunch of phonies for cocktails, he said. I could see
them all sitting around in some bar, with their goddam checkered vests, criticizing shows
and books and women in those tired, snobby voices. They kill me, those guys."
Who was Sally's friend? "His name was George something - I don't even remember- and
he went to Andover. Big, big deal." Who was the "phony Andover bastard" who so
exasperated Holden Caulfield? Can this be a very early cameo appearance of George
Herbert Walker Bush? J.D. Salinger is not known for giving interviews, but George
Bush, Big Man on the Andover campus, would have been a figure of some note under the
clock in the Biltmore during the early 1940's, which seems to be the epoch in which this
episode is set.
Bush's devotion to racist genetic determinism recalls a slightly earlier figure of the
Eastern Liberal Establishment in literature; this is the Amory Blaine of F. Scott