"It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it"
About this Quote
Self-incrimination, then self-erasure: that double move is pure Salinger. "It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit" performs a kind of forced maturity, the speaker reaching for the adult script of accountability. Then the sentence trips over itself: "but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it". The piled-up negatives and qualifiers aren't just sloppy; they're psychological. The voice is trying to crawl out from under the weight of intention. If you "hardly" know, if you "didn't even" know, then maybe you can't be fully blamed. It's an alibi made of syntax.
Salinger is famously interested in the gap between what people feel and what they can articulate without betraying themselves. Here, language becomes a nervous tic, a shield. The speaker wants absolution but also wants to keep the messy, private motives intact. Admitting stupidity is safer than admitting desire, anger, or loneliness. "Stupid" flattens the act into a mistake, not a revelation.
In the postwar American context Salinger wrote into, this kind of verbal backpedaling reads as a defense against judgment - from parents, institutions, the whole respectable machinery that insists every action be rational and explainable. The line captures a teenage (and distinctly Salingerian) strategy: confess just enough to seem honest, then sabotage the confession so no one can pin you down. The result is funny in its clumsiness, but the humor cuts. It's the sound of someone realizing that "owning it" is another performance, and they're not sure which self is onstage.
Salinger is famously interested in the gap between what people feel and what they can articulate without betraying themselves. Here, language becomes a nervous tic, a shield. The speaker wants absolution but also wants to keep the messy, private motives intact. Admitting stupidity is safer than admitting desire, anger, or loneliness. "Stupid" flattens the act into a mistake, not a revelation.
In the postwar American context Salinger wrote into, this kind of verbal backpedaling reads as a defense against judgment - from parents, institutions, the whole respectable machinery that insists every action be rational and explainable. The line captures a teenage (and distinctly Salingerian) strategy: confess just enough to seem honest, then sabotage the confession so no one can pin you down. The result is funny in its clumsiness, but the humor cuts. It's the sound of someone realizing that "owning it" is another performance, and they're not sure which self is onstage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning from Mistakes |
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