At the
beginning of the story,is in California retelling the story that landed him in a mental
hospital. His older brother D.B. also lives in California working as a successful screenwriter.
Like a good big brother, he visits Holden every weekend and says he will drive him home to New
York in his Jaguar when the time comes. Before D.B. could afford Jags, he wrote a short story
called The Secret Goldfish which Holden really likes (1). He's so upset
that D.B. went to Hollywood to write for movies because Holden hates movies; so, he calls his
brother a prostitute for selling himself short rather than becoming a real author.
Holden isn't the only one to think that D.B. is selling his talent out to the wrong
industry. One of Holden's former English teachers from Elkton Hills also disagrees with D.B.'s
choice to move to California and called him up to tell him so before he left. Holden says,
" said that anybody that could write like D.B. had no business going out to Hollywood.
That's exactly what I said, practically" (181).
At one point, Holden
dreams of living in a cabin and inviting his family over for visits. He would have the following
rules, though:
"I'd let oldcome out to visit me in
the summertime and on Christmas vacation and Easter vacation. And I'd let D.B. come out and
visit me for a while if he wanted a nice, quiet place for his writing, but he couldn't write any
movies in my cabin, only stories and books. I'd have this rule that nobody could do anything
phone when they visited me. If anybody tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay"
(205).
Here again we see Holden mention D.B. being in his
life, but not if he's doing anything with movies. It's a bit funny, actually. Holden isn't as
close with D.B. obviously, as he was with his little brotherwho died of Leukemia, but he doesn't
completely forget about him, either.
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