What Has Become of You by Jan Elizabeth Watson Read Free Book Online

the novel and squarely faced the students. She wished she had thought to bring a bottle of water to class. Her mouth was so dry.
    “Now,” she said, working her way down the first row of tables, pausing again for effect as she moved down the second row, “Holden starts off by saying that what readers probably would want to know about him is ‘that David Copperfield kind of crap’—in other words, the basic biographical details that writers often provide for their characters at the beginning of a novel. Who he is, where he’s from, what his parents do for a living, what his grandparents did before that. But what’s interesting is that he does not, in fact, go on to tell the readers ‘that David Copperfield kind of crap.’ Do you think Holden is cheating readers of what they really want to know? Is it what
you
would really want to know, when first ‘meeting’ a new character?”
    “Depends on the character,” Jamie Friedman said promptly.
    Vera gave Jamie a small, approving nod. “Why do you say that? Why would it depend?”
    Jamie went blank. She had shot her wad too quickly and was now overthinking it, Vera could see. “Anyone else want to hazard a guess? An opinion as to why it might depend on the character?”
    “Well, with some characters,” one girl said—Martha True, a bespectacled girl with a sharp little chin and a wobbly, nasal voice—“their background is important to the plot. With others, you don’t really need to know all that stuff to be able to understand them.”
    “Sometimes having all that background stuff gets boring,” Loo Garippa said. “Some stories start off talking about somebody’s great-grandfather or something, and who cares? It doesn’t really have anything to do with what happens later.”
    Vera was already pleased with the direction the class was taking. These girls were sharper, sad to say, than some of her community college students had been. They were certainly more responsive. She uncapped one of her whiteboard markers and drew an uneven triangle on the board. For the next ten minutes she spoke about rising actions and climaxes (there was no giggling when she said “climax,” as she had expected there might be) and conflict and plot structure.
    “Holden Caulfield says things really
funny
,” Kelsey said out of the blue, making Vera wonder if she had been paying attention to any of what came before. “When is this book set again?”
    “I’d be happy to refresh your memory.” Though this hadn’t been on her day’s agenda, Vera began to talk about the 1940s and the life of the author who’d written
The Catcher in the Rye
. Inspired, she pulled down the movie projector screen and downloaded Internet pictures of young Jerome David Salinger himself as well as various quaint-looking pictures of New York City back in the day. She called this “providing sociohistorical context.” “Because of the different time period, it’s possible some of you might not feel a connection to Holden; things may seem quite different to you now. But many readers over the decades have found that the thoughts and emotions Holden has are universal and timeless. As we read further in the novel, I’d like for you to be especially mindful of his thoughts and emotions and whether or not you think they reflect what it’s like to be a person close to your age. These are issues you can explore in your journals as well.
    “That’s about all we have time for today,” Vera said. “I appreciate your attentiveness. Please don’t leave before you take this handout. It’s a list of discussion questions pertaining to chapters five through seven, which is your reading assignment for tonight. Please write answers to these questions—complete sentences,
please
—and bring them with you tomorrow.”
    There were a couple of audible sighs and groans as the girls gathered up their books. Vera felt a little dazed. The class had been a slight improvement over the day before, she thought—at