SCAMPY (Things We've learned)

We have this dog, and he is interested in cats. He'll chase them, and when he catches them, he tries to hump them. They swat him in the face.

The three out door cats have taken to sitting on the steps out in the garage where the kitchen door opens out. They wait on the steps. This frustrates the dog who scratches at the door endlessly. He has taken the paint off.

Giani decided if he was going to do that, it might be useful if his persistence was doing something else. She found some extra tough sandpaper and glued it to the door, so when the dog is trying to get at the cats, he trims his nails.

60 YEARS LATER Coming Through the Rye by John David California WindupBird Publishing, England. 2009

I did finally get around to reading this, which is a decent book, but when one does a parody of a book, it should be shorter, not longer than the original.

Anyway, Holden Caulfield wakes up in an old folks home and still thinks he's sixteen. He decides to go back to New York City. This does sound a little absurd, but the author is trying to make a point about the writer's character having outstripped the author.

The style is fairly good at replicating the nuances of the model, and quite well, considering the writer's has English as a second language. What points the writer makes are over stressed.

Again, this kind of book didn't need to be CATCHER IN THE RYE. Several other writers could have been used where the creations overshadowed the creator. Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert E. Howard, L. Frank Baum, and any number of others.

And in a sense, this has been done in a different manner with Flann O'Brien's AT SWIM TWO BIRDS, which is a writer who is writing about a group of characters (including Finn McCool and the Easter Bunny) who get annoyed with him and begin controlling him by writing about him. The writer stays in bed a lot.

The real author of this book did himself a disservice by writing under a pen name and reviewing his work on Amazon.com.Uk and giving it a five star review. The circularity of the review and novel did not go unnoticed.

Of course, J.D. Salinger is pissed and the novel is banned in the USA.

Someone could do a fat collection of the shorter parodies of Salinger that have appeared over the years.