Caulfield's Phonies

Me and Holden Caulfield's got a lot in common. Just like Yossarian and me. I mean if all three of us could get together, that would most certainly, nearly kill us all.
Anyway, the thing about Caulfield that makes me and he such tight buddies, is his irritability, though not aways consistent, of phonies. And that... is what I'll talk about in this post.

Here's a race that surpasses the human race by their sheer number! Here's a race that's all over the place, but you never get used to them! Here's a race that would kill you all by their mere statements! Ladies and Gentlemen, we're talking about, YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBOURHOOD PHONIES! You know them, you acknowledge them, but you don't talk to them about them.

My favourite phonies include those: who gives expert comments on movies while he watches them (includes 'surrealstic', 'neo-realist', 'film-noir' and the likes), who gives opinions on things he's hearing for the first time, just so that he might appear Stephen Hawkins' big daddy, who says "The climax of the movie is simply great!", in between seeing a movie for the first time, who steals the jokes you said and bursts it out in front of girls without even acknowledging the original joker, who has all sorts of questions to ask in class (his questions are longer than the lecture), has a love-affair he's not sure of and does all sort of phonie crap to show the world, what true love is, who being an alcoholic tells little lambs not to follow his path and so on.

I mean if you just open your eyes and look around, you'll see your neigbourhood teeming with 'em phonies. There's the ones who spent a quarter of the day talking on cellphones in loud voices strutting all over the place, the lovers who are forever showing physical love around the college campus, the ones who try to appear cool in front of girls, the ones who play the hero, all those Bollywood actors and actresses when they are beign interviewed, all those politicians... every one of them. There's a lot more of them. But the task of identifying them, I'd leave it to you.

All this wouldn't be conclusive as to whether I'm a phonie or not. In fact, I too am a phonie at times. You can't help being one with all these phonies around you. But I swear I don't do it by choice.