"An Ethos of the Blueness of the Sky": Re-connecting with De Daumier Smith
This week in America, a 19-year-old college quarterback is in the news. He's a big star, and he's acting irreverently--partying and unabashedly enjoying the spotlight. I laugh, thinking about my own 19-year-old self: a socially awkward college sophomore spending inordinate amounts of time in the library basement, reading all the uncollected Salinger stories in Collier's and Saturday Evening Post on microfiche. It was not a glamorous time. I felt like Salinger's witty, vulnerable young characters had leapt directly from my own adolescent loneliness onto the page. When I look back at them now, which I tend to do about once every summer, I sometimes find them a little hyperbolic, or idealized. But I still feel how much those characters--not so much Holden Caulfield, but more the Glass family, and the characters in the short stories--meant to me as a young adult, and the gratitude I feel toward them quiets my inner pedant. One of the highlights of my 2013 summer w