Aye, that second part is often overlooked, especially generationally. When I was in highschool (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth), no one talked about trauma, or depression, or mental health. Literally no one. Today, every parent I know is friends with someone whose child "took a year off and went to school in Utah" and we all know what they're saying.

And even those parents ... so few recall Holden being in a residential program, journalling as part of his treatment, his depression from untreated trauma over his beloved brother's death, his sexual assault experience... Egads we were taught badly.

Nihilism is that nothing happens for a reason. Fatalism is that, should nothing happen, it happened for a reason.

(slight /s)

The way it’s usually taught in high school is deeply flawed: “Holden is a whiner, and he’s an unreliable misanthrope, just like a lot of you, my students, who I now better understand.”

How I came to it as an adult: Holden is clinically depressed, and is actually journaling from the residential house where he’s been institutionalized. I know several families whose kids “spent a semester at school in Utah” and yeah … that’s this. And the reason for his depression is in there, still so painful he can only barely discuss it: it’s grief for the death of his beloved baby brother. Oh, and he was probably molested, that’s in there too.

Back when “how to teach” this book was established, American classrooms simply didn’t discuss depression nor sexual-abuse trauma and its manifestations as fluently as we do now. This book is a triumph in how it communicates that, though it largely fell on deaf ears for a generation.

I only got halfway until I gave up. Murakami can totally cast a spell, and (alas) can swing and miss as well.

The parent company of 7-11 also has branches of Seven Bank throughout Tokyo. One reason I suppose why the ATMs in Japanese 7-11s are ideal for withdrawing Japanese yen from an American bank account.