Dallas Adult Entertainment: Revenge of the Wimps
Moving Pictures May 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE Revenge of the Wimps Holden Caulfield lives on as Greg Heffley, narrator of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the anti–Harry Potter. By James Parker
he kids, I’m
sorry to report, are getting sharper all the time. Did you know that Holden Caulfield is now in middle school? That’s right: no longer cadging drinks or wrestling with pimps in fleapit Manhattan hotel rooms, the arch-diagnostician of adult bullshit is currently trick-or-treating and going out for ice cream with his mother. His name isn’t Holden anymore—it’s Greg. But his mood, that current of fretful optimism alternating with a cavernous disenchantment, is more or less unchanged: “I don’t know if this makes me a bad person or whatever, but it’s hard for me to get interested in other people’s vacations.” Or: “I’ll be famous one day, but for now I’m stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons.”