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With The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger spends more than 200 pages inside the mind of Holden Caulfield. That’s like spending hours and HOURS with a psychiatric patient as he rants about “phonies” and “phoniness.” How 'bout we just boil all that misery down to a mere 60 seconds? Phony!

Video Transcription:

The following is a recording of a psychiatric evaluation of patient number one-nine-five-one.

Do you know who you are?

What do you think? I’m some kind of phony?

Will you please state your name?

You’re the phony, you know.

Your name, please.

Holden Caufield, YOU PHONY!

Holden, do you know where you are?

I’m wherever you phonies put me. I don’t even know why I’m talking to you. Phony!

Do you know what year it is?

It’s after the war. The year of the phonies, apparently.

Tell me about your family, Holden.

Tell me about yours, you phony &$%@#!!! I’ll tell you who’s not a phony. My sister Phoebe, that’s who. She’s just a kid but she knows more than all of you phonies combined. She wouldn’t be keeping me in here.

So you love Phoebe.

Love her? Adults are so stupid. Stupid and phony. Phoebe’s not like that. Allie wasn’t either. He would have liked the merry-go-round. He liked it when I broke the windows. They don’t understand why I broke them, but he would have understood. Allie? Allie? Where are you? Why did you leave me here to grow up alone? The phonies, Allie. They’re corrupting me. Allie …