Episode Details

The Catcher in the Rye Ch. 10 Part 2 | Banned Books Comedy Podcast

Holden Caulfield dances with all three women from Seattle, buys them drinks he can't really afford, tricks one of them into thinking she just missed Gary Cooper, and feels terrible about it immediately. Then they leave to get up early for Radio City Music Hall — and somehow that's the thing that breaks him.

Banned Camp is a comedy podcast where we read banned books chapter by chapter — we don't read ahead, so you're discovering the story with us.

Things To Listen For:

• Holden almost kisses Bernice on the top of her head right where the part is — exactly the way he'd kiss Phoebe — and Dan catches it immediately and connects it back to last episode's Phoebe description
• Dancing with Marty is described as dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor, so Holden invents a Gary Cooper sighting to get through the song — she nearly has a breakdown when she finds out she missed him, then goes back to the table and tells the other two she caught a glimpse of him
• The three women work at the same insurance office in Seattle and spend the entire night scanning the room for movie stars instead of talking to each other
• Laverne keeps asking Holden to call his father and find out if he has a date tonight — four times — and Holden notes she was certainly witty
• Dan cannot figure out why Radio City Music Hall depresses Holden so much — Jennifer can't either — and neither of them realizes they just identified the most important moment in the chapter
• Dan says Holden definitely thinks he has women figured out and he's not so sure he does — Robot files this under things Dan accidentally got right

Why was The Catcher in the Rye banned? This chapter is a perfect example of what makes censors nervous — a teenager alone in a nightclub, buying drinks for older women, using words like "horry" and calling people ugly. What they miss entirely is that Holden feels more for the people he dismisses than he ever says out loud. That's the complicated part. That's the dangerous part.

If this is your first episode, you're fine starting here. Our fact-checking Robot catches you up fast, then we read the next chapter (spoilers).

Banworthy to Bingeworthy While you're here, check out this show worth bingeing:

• MS NOW Presents Clock It — Simone Sanders Townsend and Eugene Daniels position themselves at the intersection of culture and politics, talking about what they see and hear in the news so you can start to clock it too. New episodes drop Thursdays.

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