Mattis is right. It was an abyssmal translation. ....'salade de David Copperfield' indeed! Here's my problem. I'm hovering on the horns of a dilemma: When I earlier quoted the first few lines from CATCHER en francais, I neglected to note that I was quoting from L'ATTRAPE-COEURS, "Roman traduit de l'Americain par Jean-Baptiste Rossi".... Some people may have thought that I was pretentiously pretending to have translated it 'from the American' myself.... Ahem.... Nope.... But now I have to decide whether it's better to confess my apparent plagiarism, or to continue with the pretense and accept responsibility for such a putrid translation.... (There are, by the way, some real hip-slappers in this particular French-language edition.... I hope that M. Rossi's atrocious translation has since been superceded in la langue d'amour, et d'une demie du Canada....) Anyone heard from Rick and Mirjam recently? *....nudge, nudge, wink, wink....* Cheers, Paul