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Franny and Zooey
‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.’
First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.
Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.
Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.
First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.
Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.
Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.
201 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
About the author
J.D. Salinger
197 books15.5k followersWorks, most notably novel
The Catcher in the Rye
(1951), of American writer Jerome David Salinger often concern troubled, sensitive adolescents.
People well know this author for his reclusive nature. He published his last original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980. Reared in city of New York, Salinger began short stories in secondary school and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948, he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker, his subsequent home magazine. He released an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield especially influenced adolescent readers. Widely read and controversial, sells a quarter-million copies a year.
The success led to public attention and scrutiny: reclusive, he published new work less frequently. He followed with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.
Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton. In the late 1990s, Joyce Maynard, a close ex-lover, and Margaret Salinger, his daughter, wrote and released his memoirs. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but the ensuing publicity indefinitely delayed the release.
Another writer used one of his characters, resulting in copyright infringement; he filed a lawsuit against this writer and afterward made headlines around the globe in June 2009. Salinger died of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.
People well know this author for his reclusive nature. He published his last original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980. Reared in city of New York, Salinger began short stories in secondary school and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948, he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker, his subsequent home magazine. He released an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield especially influenced adolescent readers. Widely read and controversial, sells a quarter-million copies a year.
The success led to public attention and scrutiny: reclusive, he published new work less frequently. He followed with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.
Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton. In the late 1990s, Joyce Maynard, a close ex-lover, and Margaret Salinger, his daughter, wrote and released his memoirs. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but the ensuing publicity indefinitely delayed the release.
Another writer used one of his characters, resulting in copyright infringement; he filed a lawsuit against this writer and afterward made headlines around the globe in June 2009. Salinger died of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.
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July 16, 2024
I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
The blinking cursor that preceded this review, the place-holder of possibility before the big bang of creation, speaks volumes when taken in relation to J.D. Salinger’s exquisite Franny and Zooey. In a novel about identity, about forging who we are from a blank slate in the void of society and humanity, we are constantly called to the floor and reminded how often we impose our ego, or wishes, our desires, and become a caricature of ourselves hoping that by creating a façade-self, our true self will eventually follow the leader and fill the mold we’ve forged for the world to see. We constantly try to pigeonhole the world on our own terms, wrongly imposing our own perspective and missing out in the beauty that flowers when we embrace anything as itself without the confines of our implied impressions. This creates a highly tuned, self-conscious atmosphere that makes it difficult to begin writing about without feeling like I, myself, am imposing my undeserved and unqualified ego by casting these words into the world. That damned blinking cursor amidst a field of white on my screen, returning again and again after each quickly deleted early attempts, made me feel very much like Franny herself, sick of realizing that every action is an attempt at being noticed.
I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.
This novel was graciously bequeathed to me at the exact moment it was needed most. With a ravenous Midwest winter providing the bleak setting to funerals and my own divorce, the existential crisis and subsequent breakdown of Franny Glass was the pure emotional catharsis that kept me positive and afloat across life’s tumultuous sea¹. Franny and Zooey is virtually Zen in novel format, and for reasons far surpassing the religious allusions that decorate the novel (as well as entice readers into other spiritually gratifying books such as The Upanishads). There is something eminently soothing about this Salinger tale of family, something that really struck me in the deep regions of my heart and soul, and prodded certain defining aspects of my childhood that I tend to keep from conversation. Salinger’s prose come across so natural and heartfelt as if he truly were Buddy himself writing the second half, and reads like a naturally talented author writing at the pinnacle of his craft. The use of italics, for example, a technique exercised right up to the borderlines of overuse, is one of the many tactics Salinger applies² to his literary canvas to conceive life out of a nearly plot-less, introspective narrative and issuing within it a warm glow to resonate deep within the reader, lifting their spirits and calming their minds. It feels like the point of conception for Wes Anderson’s entire career (and meant as the highest of compliments to both Anderson and Salinger), and much of the style and feel of the book touched many of the same literary emotions that stored DFW’s Infinite Jest forever in my heart.
Presented as two separate, yet eternally bound stories, Salinger toys with the way we craft our identity in our formative years. The first story, concerning a dinner between Franny and her egotistical and stuffy collegiate cliché of a boyfriend, Lane Coutell, presents Franny functioning as an independent individual in the world, a singular facet of humanity defined as Franny. There is no mention of her family or her past, only details pertaining directly to her as the individual at hand. However, the second story is not one of independent identity, but instead has each character represented as an individual in relation to each other—as a product of a family. Franny’s obsession with the book, The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way, which is initially presented—direct from the mouth of Franny in an attempt to portray herself as an independent identity discovering things on her own and forging beliefs untarnished by the influence of others—as a book she took from her college library, is revealed in the latter story to be a book held in high regard by the eldest Glass children and borrowed by Franny from their stagnant bedroom. We cannot escape our past, our family, our choices, or ourselves, and any identity we attempt to form can only become a crumbling façade without this depth of acceptance and awareness. We are only who we are in relation to those around us, and without accepting both ourselves, and the world around us, can we become fully actualized identities.
The Catcher in the Rye a book as essential to any high school literary education as vegetables to any balanced diet, gave us Holden Caulfield who put a microscope to society and exposed the bacteria of ‘phoniness’ that is inherent in everyone around him. Franny prescribes to this disenchanting reality as well, abandoning her laundry list of pleasures upon seeing them as merely a method of stoking her own ego. She views her every possible move as just another solution towards conformity and every action as attention seeking.
I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
Where Caulfield left us in a feeling of superiority, yet devastating darkness, for recognizing the fakers and phonies around us, Zooey Glass, full of unremitting charm, tosses a spiritual life raft and allows us to recognize the beauty in the world around us. ‘In the first place,’ he lovingly scolds his sister, Franny, ‘you’re way off when you start railing atthings and people instead of at yourself.’ We are all a part of this world, nobody is truly special and above worldly mistakes and foibles, and we are all eternally caught in a struggle of identity whether we know it or not. Like the best of David Foster Wallace, this is a story about those with the mental and emotional acuity to recognize or fear that their actions and beliefs conform to the phoniness of the world regardless of how hard they try to shake it; the Glass family is a family of practically card-carrying MENSA members with an intellect that is not only a transcendental gift but also a hellishly weighty burden. Life is a game we all must unwillingly participate in, at least to the extent that we remain alive and in the game, and we should not chastise the world and hold ourselves in too high of regard unless we really take a look at our own motives. He exposes Franny’s decision to follow the Pilgrim’s method of finding transcendence through relentless prayer to be just another expression of the ego she finds so distasteful in others, enacting a self-righteous holier-than-thou attitudes without actually understanding the mask she has chosen to wear. Drawing upon the lessons learned from his elder brothers, Buddy and Seymour, Zooey challenges Franny to look beyond what she considers the ego—’half the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren’t using their true egos…the thing you think is his ego, isn’t his ego at all but some other, much dirtier, much less basic faculty’—and to recognize the true beauty of everyone around her. Inspired by the advice of his eldest brother, Seymour (whose tragic suicide is chronicled in a short story I’d proclaim as perfect, A Perfect Day for Bananafish from Salinger’s Nine Stories), that even though the audience can’t see them, to shine his shoes ‘for the Fat Lady’, Zooey proclaims, like a hip, 1950’s New York bodhisattva Are you listening to me?There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Syemour’s Fat Lady…It’s Christ Himself.’ Somehow, as if by pure magic, Salinger manages to highlight spirituality without the reader feeling like he is preaching or backhanding them with Christianity (in fact, through the frequent references to many of the world’s religion that wonderfully adorn the novel, the message feels entirely universal despite any religious, or even non-religious, beliefs the reader brings to the table), but simply professes a triumphant message of universal love that is sure to infiltrate each and every heart. To fully exist, one must accept the world for what it is, love both the blessings and blemishes, and accept objects, ideas and people on those being's own terms, as a thing-in-itself, instead of an imposed belief in what we think they should be. We cannot infringe our ego upon the things beyond our grasp, but merely fully love them for them.
We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.
Essentially, this is a novel about arguments. How else can we properly form an identity without our own internal arguments between our disparate ideas and ideals? Religious, societal, whatever, this is a book of great minds coming together to hash out their beliefs in an effort to dig up some sort of truth that you can pocket and carry with you into the harsh weathers of reality. The center piece of the book, the ever-logical and too-witty-for-his-own-good Zooey engaged in a shouting match with his mother, a woman with such wholesome and good-natured worldly wisdom that appears as simplicity to an untrained eye, is wholly unforgettable and made of the stuff that reminds you why you so love reading books. And what better way to craft a novel full of arguments that to focus it upon a family, the perfect stage for arguments that allow oneself to shed any social armor and nakedly swing their sword of beliefs and opinions? Upon entering into the second story of the novel, Franny and Zooey is more of less contained within the confines of the family circle, further highlighting Franny’s breakdown³ as the collapse of a socially reinforced personality mask to reduce her to her basic and pure elements as a the youngest member of the Glass family. Though Zooey has plans to meet with his television world contacts, he doesn’t leave the house until he can set things right; the family must be set right before the outside world can be accounted for. There seems to be a belief that the family is a functioning being that outweighs that of the individual, and reinforces the family vs. the outside world ideal that was idolized in the 1950’s television programs like Leave it to Beaver or even Ozzie and Harriet. Family values must hold strong against a world that will rio them apart with its frightening winds. Salinger, who was fully fascinated with his Glass family creation, having a file cabinet full of notes about the family and diving deep within their mechanics for much of his fiction, creates his ideal family values that must cope with worldly problems, such as Seymour’s war experience and fatal struggle with PTSD, Buddy and Zooey’s ongoing struggle with a entertainment world more entrenched in simple pleasures and ratings than actual intellectual merit, or even Franny’s crisis with the ‘white-shoe college boys’ inflicting their stylized genius on those around them. The Glass house is a house ‘full of ghosts’ and the family must accept themselves as a product of this gene pool, as a product of the teachings bestowed upon them by their own blood, as a functioning member in not only the family but the world at large, taking all this into a catalyst for their own identity. Interestingly enough, it would seem that Franny and Zooey is more a book about Buddy and Seymour and their legacy than the title characters themselves. It is through the youngest two Glass members that we understand the eldest two. This technique of creating a penumbra effect of understanding to actualize Buddy and Seymour in the minds and hearts of the reader is fully in keeping with the idea that we can only form our identity in relation to all those around us. Just as we must accept the world around us on its own terms, we must accept ourselves on our own and not based on how others will view us.
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
I am reminded of a favorite quote of mine that comes from the cathartically cantankerous with of Charles Bukowski:
5/5
¹ This is not, however, the ideal book to read when quitting smoking. Rest assured, I persevered. But really, practically one cigarette or cigar is lit per page. ‘The cigars are ballast, sweetheart. Sheer ballast. If he didn’t have a cigar to hold on to, his feet would leave the ground.’
² Another subtle, yet incredible narrative flourish is Zooey's constant use of 'buddy' as a term of endearment to his sister. This was a nod to Jay Gatsby frequently calling others 'old sport' in The Great Gatsby.
³ In the margins of my book, I tussled with the idea that Franny’s behavior would be clinically explained as a manic episode, but embraced by a literary bent as an existential conundrum. This further led to an idea that Lane, who viewed Franny’s collapse from a cold, callus position of one more concerned about having to miss the football game and having to excuse his girlfriends erratic behavior, as choosing to see the world from a scientific perspective that he thought should be devoid of emotional rationalization to avoid looking foolish, whereas Franny fully embraces emotion as a window into the soul and chooses a spiritual outlook to organize the hustle and bustle of the world in her mind.
The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.
The blinking cursor that preceded this review, the place-holder of possibility before the big bang of creation, speaks volumes when taken in relation to J.D. Salinger’s exquisite Franny and Zooey. In a novel about identity, about forging who we are from a blank slate in the void of society and humanity, we are constantly called to the floor and reminded how often we impose our ego, or wishes, our desires, and become a caricature of ourselves hoping that by creating a façade-self, our true self will eventually follow the leader and fill the mold we’ve forged for the world to see. We constantly try to pigeonhole the world on our own terms, wrongly imposing our own perspective and missing out in the beauty that flowers when we embrace anything as itself without the confines of our implied impressions. This creates a highly tuned, self-conscious atmosphere that makes it difficult to begin writing about without feeling like I, myself, am imposing my undeserved and unqualified ego by casting these words into the world. That damned blinking cursor amidst a field of white on my screen, returning again and again after each quickly deleted early attempts, made me feel very much like Franny herself, sick of realizing that every action is an attempt at being noticed.
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.Can I write without being a disgusting egomaniac, without imposing myself on everyone? My own fears and excuses for writers block aside, Salinger perfectly focuses upon the inner crises of anyone that has truly looked themselves in the mirror and assessed both the world around them and their place in it. Through a simplistic, character driven account of a family thwarted by their own crippling self-awareness, Salinger crafts a flawless tale of identity and family that takes up right where he left off with Holden Caulfield—where we learn not to judge those around us, but to understand and accept one another on their own terms in order to live and love.
I just never felt so fantastically rocky in my entire life.
This novel was graciously bequeathed to me at the exact moment it was needed most. With a ravenous Midwest winter providing the bleak setting to funerals and my own divorce, the existential crisis and subsequent breakdown of Franny Glass was the pure emotional catharsis that kept me positive and afloat across life’s tumultuous sea¹. Franny and Zooey is virtually Zen in novel format, and for reasons far surpassing the religious allusions that decorate the novel (as well as entice readers into other spiritually gratifying books such as The Upanishads). There is something eminently soothing about this Salinger tale of family, something that really struck me in the deep regions of my heart and soul, and prodded certain defining aspects of my childhood that I tend to keep from conversation. Salinger’s prose come across so natural and heartfelt as if he truly were Buddy himself writing the second half, and reads like a naturally talented author writing at the pinnacle of his craft. The use of italics, for example, a technique exercised right up to the borderlines of overuse, is one of the many tactics Salinger applies² to his literary canvas to conceive life out of a nearly plot-less, introspective narrative and issuing within it a warm glow to resonate deep within the reader, lifting their spirits and calming their minds. It feels like the point of conception for Wes Anderson’s entire career (and meant as the highest of compliments to both Anderson and Salinger), and much of the style and feel of the book touched many of the same literary emotions that stored DFW’s Infinite Jest forever in my heart.
Presented as two separate, yet eternally bound stories, Salinger toys with the way we craft our identity in our formative years. The first story, concerning a dinner between Franny and her egotistical and stuffy collegiate cliché of a boyfriend, Lane Coutell, presents Franny functioning as an independent individual in the world, a singular facet of humanity defined as Franny. There is no mention of her family or her past, only details pertaining directly to her as the individual at hand. However, the second story is not one of independent identity, but instead has each character represented as an individual in relation to each other—as a product of a family. Franny’s obsession with the book, The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way, which is initially presented—direct from the mouth of Franny in an attempt to portray herself as an independent identity discovering things on her own and forging beliefs untarnished by the influence of others—as a book she took from her college library, is revealed in the latter story to be a book held in high regard by the eldest Glass children and borrowed by Franny from their stagnant bedroom. We cannot escape our past, our family, our choices, or ourselves, and any identity we attempt to form can only become a crumbling façade without this depth of acceptance and awareness. We are only who we are in relation to those around us, and without accepting both ourselves, and the world around us, can we become fully actualized identities.
The Catcher in the Rye a book as essential to any high school literary education as vegetables to any balanced diet, gave us Holden Caulfield who put a microscope to society and exposed the bacteria of ‘phoniness’ that is inherent in everyone around him. Franny prescribes to this disenchanting reality as well, abandoning her laundry list of pleasures upon seeing them as merely a method of stoking her own ego. She views her every possible move as just another solution towards conformity and every action as attention seeking.
I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.Compare this expression existential angst to the depictions of her boyfriend. Lane's true nature is best examined in his juxtaposition to Franny, revealed through Salinger’s ominous narration to be one constantly seeking an expression or posture to best capture the exact image of himself that he would ideally envision the world to read from him.
Lane sat up a bit in his chair and adjusted his expression from that of all-round apprehension and discontent to that of a man whose date has merely gone to the john, leaving him, as dates do, with nothing to do in the meantime but smoke and look bored, perfectly attractively bored.To Lane, Franny is just an extension of his costume of attractive social veneer, a girl attractive and intelligent enough to be seen with in order for him to be viewed in high regard by his contemporaries. It is the Lanes and all the ‘section men’, as Franny terms them, who are more concerned with the appearance of being a genius than actually being a genius.
I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.
Where Caulfield left us in a feeling of superiority, yet devastating darkness, for recognizing the fakers and phonies around us, Zooey Glass, full of unremitting charm, tosses a spiritual life raft and allows us to recognize the beauty in the world around us. ‘In the first place,’ he lovingly scolds his sister, Franny, ‘you’re way off when you start railing atthings and people instead of at yourself.’ We are all a part of this world, nobody is truly special and above worldly mistakes and foibles, and we are all eternally caught in a struggle of identity whether we know it or not. Like the best of David Foster Wallace, this is a story about those with the mental and emotional acuity to recognize or fear that their actions and beliefs conform to the phoniness of the world regardless of how hard they try to shake it; the Glass family is a family of practically card-carrying MENSA members with an intellect that is not only a transcendental gift but also a hellishly weighty burden. Life is a game we all must unwillingly participate in, at least to the extent that we remain alive and in the game, and we should not chastise the world and hold ourselves in too high of regard unless we really take a look at our own motives. He exposes Franny’s decision to follow the Pilgrim’s method of finding transcendence through relentless prayer to be just another expression of the ego she finds so distasteful in others, enacting a self-righteous holier-than-thou attitudes without actually understanding the mask she has chosen to wear. Drawing upon the lessons learned from his elder brothers, Buddy and Seymour, Zooey challenges Franny to look beyond what she considers the ego—’half the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren’t using their true egos…the thing you think is his ego, isn’t his ego at all but some other, much dirtier, much less basic faculty’—and to recognize the true beauty of everyone around her. Inspired by the advice of his eldest brother, Seymour (whose tragic suicide is chronicled in a short story I’d proclaim as perfect, A Perfect Day for Bananafish from Salinger’s Nine Stories), that even though the audience can’t see them, to shine his shoes ‘for the Fat Lady’, Zooey proclaims, like a hip, 1950’s New York bodhisattva Are you listening to me?There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Syemour’s Fat Lady…It’s Christ Himself.’ Somehow, as if by pure magic, Salinger manages to highlight spirituality without the reader feeling like he is preaching or backhanding them with Christianity (in fact, through the frequent references to many of the world’s religion that wonderfully adorn the novel, the message feels entirely universal despite any religious, or even non-religious, beliefs the reader brings to the table), but simply professes a triumphant message of universal love that is sure to infiltrate each and every heart. To fully exist, one must accept the world for what it is, love both the blessings and blemishes, and accept objects, ideas and people on those being's own terms, as a thing-in-itself, instead of an imposed belief in what we think they should be. We cannot infringe our ego upon the things beyond our grasp, but merely fully love them for them.
We are, all four of us, blood relatives, and we speak a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest distance between any two points is a fullish circle.
Essentially, this is a novel about arguments. How else can we properly form an identity without our own internal arguments between our disparate ideas and ideals? Religious, societal, whatever, this is a book of great minds coming together to hash out their beliefs in an effort to dig up some sort of truth that you can pocket and carry with you into the harsh weathers of reality. The center piece of the book, the ever-logical and too-witty-for-his-own-good Zooey engaged in a shouting match with his mother, a woman with such wholesome and good-natured worldly wisdom that appears as simplicity to an untrained eye, is wholly unforgettable and made of the stuff that reminds you why you so love reading books. And what better way to craft a novel full of arguments that to focus it upon a family, the perfect stage for arguments that allow oneself to shed any social armor and nakedly swing their sword of beliefs and opinions? Upon entering into the second story of the novel, Franny and Zooey is more of less contained within the confines of the family circle, further highlighting Franny’s breakdown³ as the collapse of a socially reinforced personality mask to reduce her to her basic and pure elements as a the youngest member of the Glass family. Though Zooey has plans to meet with his television world contacts, he doesn’t leave the house until he can set things right; the family must be set right before the outside world can be accounted for. There seems to be a belief that the family is a functioning being that outweighs that of the individual, and reinforces the family vs. the outside world ideal that was idolized in the 1950’s television programs like Leave it to Beaver or even Ozzie and Harriet. Family values must hold strong against a world that will rio them apart with its frightening winds. Salinger, who was fully fascinated with his Glass family creation, having a file cabinet full of notes about the family and diving deep within their mechanics for much of his fiction, creates his ideal family values that must cope with worldly problems, such as Seymour’s war experience and fatal struggle with PTSD, Buddy and Zooey’s ongoing struggle with a entertainment world more entrenched in simple pleasures and ratings than actual intellectual merit, or even Franny’s crisis with the ‘white-shoe college boys’ inflicting their stylized genius on those around them. The Glass house is a house ‘full of ghosts’ and the family must accept themselves as a product of this gene pool, as a product of the teachings bestowed upon them by their own blood, as a functioning member in not only the family but the world at large, taking all this into a catalyst for their own identity. Interestingly enough, it would seem that Franny and Zooey is more a book about Buddy and Seymour and their legacy than the title characters themselves. It is through the youngest two Glass members that we understand the eldest two. This technique of creating a penumbra effect of understanding to actualize Buddy and Seymour in the minds and hearts of the reader is fully in keeping with the idea that we can only form our identity in relation to all those around us. Just as we must accept the world around us on its own terms, we must accept ourselves on our own and not based on how others will view us.
An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
I am reminded of a favorite quote of mine that comes from the cathartically cantankerous with of Charles Bukowski:
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.We cannot spend our time criticizing others, overanalyzing ever flaw and absurdity that presents itself in each face we encounter. Because what is gained from this that has any merit to our finite existence? We are all bumbling about trying to find our way in a world whose meaning must inherently escape us (and what point would it serve anyhow if we understood life and could just simply follow the dotted line towards a perfect life?). This is a novel of staggering importance and cathartic power that far surpasses even the frequently touted The Catcher in the Rye. Drawing a Zen-like potency from the positive messages found in many of the world’s religion and spiritually influential members, Salinger teaches us a valuable lesson about acceptance and identity while simultaneously preforming the luminous task of taking a near static story and plunging the reader so deep into the souls of its characters to light the literary sky with pure vitality and emotional well-being that they feel as if it were they that suffered both the existential collapse and recovery upon the Glass’ living room couch. Allow Franny to have your breakdown for you, and for Zooey to resurrect you from the calamity. Allow Salinger to charm you with his perfectly crafted sentences and sage-like wisdom. Read Franny and Zooey and love the life you live and the world around you.
5/5
¹ This is not, however, the ideal book to read when quitting smoking. Rest assured, I persevered. But really, practically one cigarette or cigar is lit per page. ‘The cigars are ballast, sweetheart. Sheer ballast. If he didn’t have a cigar to hold on to, his feet would leave the ground.’
² Another subtle, yet incredible narrative flourish is Zooey's constant use of 'buddy' as a term of endearment to his sister. This was a nod to Jay Gatsby frequently calling others 'old sport' in The Great Gatsby.
³ In the margins of my book, I tussled with the idea that Franny’s behavior would be clinically explained as a manic episode, but embraced by a literary bent as an existential conundrum. This further led to an idea that Lane, who viewed Franny’s collapse from a cold, callus position of one more concerned about having to miss the football game and having to excuse his girlfriends erratic behavior, as choosing to see the world from a scientific perspective that he thought should be devoid of emotional rationalization to avoid looking foolish, whereas Franny fully embraces emotion as a window into the soul and chooses a spiritual outlook to organize the hustle and bustle of the world in her mind.
The cards are stacked (quite properly, I imagine) against all professional aesthetes, and no doubt we all deserve the dark, wordy, academic deaths we all sooner or later die.
March 22, 2023
I wish I could rate the two sections separately -- Franny was an easy 5/5, one of the best things I've ever read, whereas Zooey was 3.5/5. Overall, though, there are SO many outrageous, hilarious, and brilliant moments, presented by Salinger with an air of fond mockery.
"I do like him. I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet someone I could respect"
"I do like him. I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet someone I could respect"
February 28, 2024
I loved this book so much I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself for several hours after reading it.
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...
Logically, it seems that maybe shorter books would be harder to love. You spend less time with the characters, the narrative complexity must be limited, you live in the world for a minimal amount of time.
But for the past few years, I’ve found that I’m more likely to adore short books. Maybe it has something to do with the incomprehensible length of so many young adult fantasy books I’ve read, which have no need or right to stretch so far past the four hundred page mark.
Or maybe I’m endlessly impressed by the power of some authors to touch me with the strength of their voices, their prose, their characters, their stories, in less than three hundred pages.
I had fallen in love with this book, for example, within a few dozen pages.
Salinger’s writing is glorious, Franny and Zooey and the Glass family leap off the page, I could spend unlimited volumes sprawled in the overcrowded living room of their glamorous unusual apartment. The ending hits like a physical strike. I was reading of both feelings I’d always had and never put into words and emotions I had never imagined.
I need a modern day Frankenstein - someone to wake Salinger up and tell him I need enough of the Glass family’s words to spend the rest of my life with.
I don’t care about the ethics.
Bottom line: Literally no one needs me to tell them this book is amazing, but it is and I’m saying it anyway.
----------
reread updates
welcome back to another installment of PROJECT 5 STAR, an excuse for me to revisit all my favorite books and feel joy again.
for once.
update: it worked!!!
----------
pre-review
this book feels like it was made for me in a lab.
review to come / 5 stars
----------
currently-reading updates
30 pages in and i am already absolutely in love with franny
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.co...
Logically, it seems that maybe shorter books would be harder to love. You spend less time with the characters, the narrative complexity must be limited, you live in the world for a minimal amount of time.
But for the past few years, I’ve found that I’m more likely to adore short books. Maybe it has something to do with the incomprehensible length of so many young adult fantasy books I’ve read, which have no need or right to stretch so far past the four hundred page mark.
Or maybe I’m endlessly impressed by the power of some authors to touch me with the strength of their voices, their prose, their characters, their stories, in less than three hundred pages.
I had fallen in love with this book, for example, within a few dozen pages.
Salinger’s writing is glorious, Franny and Zooey and the Glass family leap off the page, I could spend unlimited volumes sprawled in the overcrowded living room of their glamorous unusual apartment. The ending hits like a physical strike. I was reading of both feelings I’d always had and never put into words and emotions I had never imagined.
I need a modern day Frankenstein - someone to wake Salinger up and tell him I need enough of the Glass family’s words to spend the rest of my life with.
I don’t care about the ethics.
Bottom line: Literally no one needs me to tell them this book is amazing, but it is and I’m saying it anyway.
----------
reread updates
welcome back to another installment of PROJECT 5 STAR, an excuse for me to revisit all my favorite books and feel joy again.
for once.
update: it worked!!!
----------
pre-review
this book feels like it was made for me in a lab.
review to come / 5 stars
----------
currently-reading updates
30 pages in and i am already absolutely in love with franny
May 30, 2007
I am a huge JD Salinger fan, and I'm one of those people who's read "Catcher in the Rye" like 200 times, several times a year since I was about twelve. I buy into every cliche said about it: it changed my life, it made me want to write, it validated my own teen angst, Salinger captures teen-speak amazingly well, Holden Caulfield is vulnerable and wise, a kid-hero, etc. I have such an emotional attachment to the book that I find it hard to tolerate much criticism of it. Case in point: I recently came across an article written by Jonathan Yardley in 2004 for the Washington Post entitled "J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly". One of the best quotes from the piece:
"Rereading 'The Catcher in the Rye' after all those years was almost literally a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil."
Ouch. Double ouch because I had to look up "jejune".
This article prompted me to delve deeper into the Salinger canon, and I resurfaced holding "Franny & Zooey". Yardley may have prompted me to question my devotion, but this book cemented what I already knew: JD Salinger is a wonderful writer and his characters are the written equivalent of crack. You just can't get enough.
"Franny & Zooey" is one of several books/short stories written about the Glass family. There are seven Glass kids, all of whom were, at various points, panelists on a radio quiz show with the best name ever: "It's A Wise Child".
"Franny & Zooey" focuses on the two youngest siblings, hence the title, who are both in the midst of emotional and existential breakdowns. Franny, away at college in Boston, has read a book called "The Way of the Pilgrim, which has instilled in her an obsession with the concept of "praying without ceasing". Suddenly, everything around her is meaningless, she can't study or eat or sleep, and returns to New York to recouperate. Zooey is a sometimes-working actor, determined to help his sister.
The book touches on familiar Salinger-esque themes, including relgious devotion/fanaticism, kids vs. adults, a potentially meaningless world, etc. This book explores religion in an engaging, relatable way. Franny's qustions are universal and Zooey's answers are valid.
Authorities on the Glass Family will appreciate the insight into the unit, particularly into eldest brothers Seymour (who at that point has already committed suicide) and Buddy, who narrates the story. Zooey blames them for using himself and Franny as philosphical guinea pigs, pumping them full from the time they were toddlers with vast and varied dogma simply to see what would stick.
All of that said, I think the most important thing about this book, and all of Salinger's books, is its pure, joyful readability. "Franney & Zooey" contains passages that are absolutely HILARIOUS, specifically the extensive conversation between Zooey and his nagging mother, Bessie, that takes place in the bathroom. I was laughing out loud throughout.
He's been called the voice of several generations, but Salinger's ability to maintain belly-laugh-worthy humor while touching on such dark themes might be the most notable (and most underappreciated) thing about him.
"Rereading 'The Catcher in the Rye' after all those years was almost literally a painful experience: The combination of Salinger's execrable prose and Caulfield's jejune narcissism produced effects comparable to mainlining castor oil."
Ouch. Double ouch because I had to look up "jejune".
This article prompted me to delve deeper into the Salinger canon, and I resurfaced holding "Franny & Zooey". Yardley may have prompted me to question my devotion, but this book cemented what I already knew: JD Salinger is a wonderful writer and his characters are the written equivalent of crack. You just can't get enough.
"Franny & Zooey" is one of several books/short stories written about the Glass family. There are seven Glass kids, all of whom were, at various points, panelists on a radio quiz show with the best name ever: "It's A Wise Child".
"Franny & Zooey" focuses on the two youngest siblings, hence the title, who are both in the midst of emotional and existential breakdowns. Franny, away at college in Boston, has read a book called "The Way of the Pilgrim, which has instilled in her an obsession with the concept of "praying without ceasing". Suddenly, everything around her is meaningless, she can't study or eat or sleep, and returns to New York to recouperate. Zooey is a sometimes-working actor, determined to help his sister.
The book touches on familiar Salinger-esque themes, including relgious devotion/fanaticism, kids vs. adults, a potentially meaningless world, etc. This book explores religion in an engaging, relatable way. Franny's qustions are universal and Zooey's answers are valid.
Authorities on the Glass Family will appreciate the insight into the unit, particularly into eldest brothers Seymour (who at that point has already committed suicide) and Buddy, who narrates the story. Zooey blames them for using himself and Franny as philosphical guinea pigs, pumping them full from the time they were toddlers with vast and varied dogma simply to see what would stick.
All of that said, I think the most important thing about this book, and all of Salinger's books, is its pure, joyful readability. "Franney & Zooey" contains passages that are absolutely HILARIOUS, specifically the extensive conversation between Zooey and his nagging mother, Bessie, that takes place in the bathroom. I was laughing out loud throughout.
He's been called the voice of several generations, but Salinger's ability to maintain belly-laugh-worthy humor while touching on such dark themes might be the most notable (and most underappreciated) thing about him.
February 27, 2024
“I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.”
Franny and Zooey ~~ J.D. Salinger
This was my first exposure to Salinger. I’ve made attempts in the past to read Catcher in the Rye, but I was never able to connect with it. My friend Spenky raved about Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, so I decided this would be my introduction to Salinger. To say I was enthralled with Salinger’s writing would be an understatement.
My first thought upon reading the final page was “finally, I finished this book.” It's usually not a good thing when you're relieved once you finish a book but I feel that it's different with Salinger’s book. This was a journey, for me and the characters, in which I and they work through problems. Of course you're relieved when you find the answers at the end. And, thankfully, Salinger does give answers.
Rather than bore you with my take on “Franny and Zooey” here's a description of the book by Salinger himself. “FRANNY came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed, in 1957 by ZOOEY. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambiguous one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.”
These are two short stories but so closely related, 'Zooey' (a novella) starts where 'Franny' (a short story) ends, that it is probably better for both stories to be read together. Zooey Glass and Franny Glass are brother and sister and the two youngest of seven children. All of them have been on a quiz radio show 'A Wise Child' which seems to have led to all of them having difficulty in dealing with other people. 'Franny' centers on her going to meet her boyfriend, Lane, for the weekend which turns into a disaster on the first day because she seems to be out of sorts. 'Zooey' then offers an explanation of this from the brother's perspective as she comes home to be consumed in her problems. We get an insight into their history and an explanation and solution for Franny's problem
Perhaps 'Franny' was my favorite of the two, perhaps; perhaps 'Zooey' is the better of the two, perhaps. I found myself often agreeing with Zooey. Salenger’s observations of college students and their attitudes (how I miss those days) are funny and also quite true. He exposes the phony self-congratulatory and self-importance that is even more present now than when he wrote these works. Yes, Salinger is terribly judgmental, or at least, his characters are.
It’s that realization that no matter who you are, you are a very small piece in a much larger whole, and the need to accept that that’s crushing Franny. She wants to partake in the world without feeling let down with its banality. It seems the challenge Salinger is putting out there for Franny to face is how to love the world for what it is without condescending to it. It’s a sentiment felt at one time or another by everyone with any self-awareness.
Franny and Zooey ~~ J.D. Salinger
This was my first exposure to Salinger. I’ve made attempts in the past to read Catcher in the Rye, but I was never able to connect with it. My friend Spenky raved about Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, so I decided this would be my introduction to Salinger. To say I was enthralled with Salinger’s writing would be an understatement.
My first thought upon reading the final page was “finally, I finished this book.” It's usually not a good thing when you're relieved once you finish a book but I feel that it's different with Salinger’s book. This was a journey, for me and the characters, in which I and they work through problems. Of course you're relieved when you find the answers at the end. And, thankfully, Salinger does give answers.
Rather than bore you with my take on “Franny and Zooey” here's a description of the book by Salinger himself. “FRANNY came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed, in 1957 by ZOOEY. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambiguous one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.”
These are two short stories but so closely related, 'Zooey' (a novella) starts where 'Franny' (a short story) ends, that it is probably better for both stories to be read together. Zooey Glass and Franny Glass are brother and sister and the two youngest of seven children. All of them have been on a quiz radio show 'A Wise Child' which seems to have led to all of them having difficulty in dealing with other people. 'Franny' centers on her going to meet her boyfriend, Lane, for the weekend which turns into a disaster on the first day because she seems to be out of sorts. 'Zooey' then offers an explanation of this from the brother's perspective as she comes home to be consumed in her problems. We get an insight into their history and an explanation and solution for Franny's problem
Perhaps 'Franny' was my favorite of the two, perhaps; perhaps 'Zooey' is the better of the two, perhaps. I found myself often agreeing with Zooey. Salenger’s observations of college students and their attitudes (how I miss those days) are funny and also quite true. He exposes the phony self-congratulatory and self-importance that is even more present now than when he wrote these works. Yes, Salinger is terribly judgmental, or at least, his characters are.
It’s that realization that no matter who you are, you are a very small piece in a much larger whole, and the need to accept that that’s crushing Franny. She wants to partake in the world without feeling let down with its banality. It seems the challenge Salinger is putting out there for Franny to face is how to love the world for what it is without condescending to it. It’s a sentiment felt at one time or another by everyone with any self-awareness.
September 17, 2007
If you liked Catcher in the Rye more than your average novel, then you probably have considered reading Franny and Zooey. It's one of very few books that J.D. Salinger wrote because he kind of turned into a weird old recluse. I was really excited about reading this. I expected big things. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.
Problem number one: Zooey, who is essentially the "protagonist" (or one of two main characters) is pretty much identical to the main character from Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield. And so is every other guy character in Franny and Zooey. They all talk and act the same. It's all "Jesus Christ, goddam" and you can't tell them apart.
Problem number two: the plot. If you thought Catcher in the Rye was short on plot, check out this book. NOTHING happens. I mean it. Nothing. The first quarter of the book is just Franny sitting in a restaurant talking to her boyfriend. The remaining three fourths is Zooey sitting in the bathtub talking to his mom, then getting dressed and talking to his sister in the living room. That's it. They don't do anything. They don't go anywhere. The entire book is just characters talking to each other. And it's boring, pointless dialogue, too. It'd be one thing if they were interesting characters but they're not. And all they do is smoke. Every one of them. They chain smoke like it's the only thing Salinger could think of to put into his novel that wasn't in quotation marks.
Hmm, what can Zooey do when he's not talking...I've got it! He can smoke a cigar! Brilliant!
More like frustrating. That makes two books in a row that I've read and been disappointed with.
Problem number one: Zooey, who is essentially the "protagonist" (or one of two main characters) is pretty much identical to the main character from Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield. And so is every other guy character in Franny and Zooey. They all talk and act the same. It's all "Jesus Christ, goddam" and you can't tell them apart.
Problem number two: the plot. If you thought Catcher in the Rye was short on plot, check out this book. NOTHING happens. I mean it. Nothing. The first quarter of the book is just Franny sitting in a restaurant talking to her boyfriend. The remaining three fourths is Zooey sitting in the bathtub talking to his mom, then getting dressed and talking to his sister in the living room. That's it. They don't do anything. They don't go anywhere. The entire book is just characters talking to each other. And it's boring, pointless dialogue, too. It'd be one thing if they were interesting characters but they're not. And all they do is smoke. Every one of them. They chain smoke like it's the only thing Salinger could think of to put into his novel that wasn't in quotation marks.
Hmm, what can Zooey do when he's not talking...I've got it! He can smoke a cigar! Brilliant!
More like frustrating. That makes two books in a row that I've read and been disappointed with.
August 23, 2024
“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited.” - Jorge Luis Borges
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fingerprints are all over this. If you like Fitzgerald’s prose, look no further.
Salinger toys with readers, and I am here for it.
Allow me to provide some context for the discussion of this book. Franny and Zooey are two short stories published in 1961.
Franny is the first short story written in the third person perspective. The prose is absolutely delicious, and the quotes are extraordinary.
First sentence: Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it has been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend—the weekend of the Yale game.
Yale…..just like our friend, Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby (page 3 of the first edition, “I graduated from New Haven (aka Yale) in 1915.���)
Now, let’s take a look at some gorgeous prose/lines. Shall we?
Lane, who knew Sorenson, only slightly but had a vague, categorical aversion to his face […]. Page 6.
“Lovely,” she said with enthusiasm. Page 9.
“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful.” Page 19.
“You like Wally.”
“I don’t even know who he is.”
“You’ve met him about twenty times, for God’s sake.” Page 24.
See those beautiful contractions. Ahem…..this is also how Fitzgerald makes his prose smooth.
In the short story of Franny, Lane, Franny’s boyfriend, is droning on and on about an essay he wrote about Flaubert. Although Lane is supposed to come across as a pompous, haughty intellectual, I actually wrote an essay on Flaubert myself so I wanted to hear more….hmm, does that make me a pompous, haughty intellectual?
But I digress…..
Meanwhile, Franny is having an inner crisis. She has been reading, The Way of a Pilgrim, where if a certain prayer is repeated enough times, the words will synchronize with the heartbeat (page 36)—she is contemplating a transformation, to be different.
Franny says, “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” Page 30.
This reminds me of Becky Chambers in A Psalm for the Wild-Built:
You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.
“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful.”
Franny also says (page 38):
“I didn’t say I believed it or I didn’t believe it,” She said, and scanned the table for the folder of materials. “I said it was fascinating.”
Sounds eerily familiar to this line from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:
“I didn’t say I liked it, I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”
Zooey is the second short story, and it takes a first-person perspective. Zooey is the slightly older brother to Franny. He is an actor and a recovering child prodigy.
First line: The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect than facts even usually do.
On page 48, I noticed the word “shrill.” This is a word used quite a bit in The Great Gatsby, and look page 49, The Great Gatsby finally breaks into the short story and is called out by name.
Page 58, “I was a proper snob in college.” While in The Great Gatsby, “I snobbishly repeat…”
Page 181: “It was as though marionette strings has been attached to him and given an overzealous yank.” The Great Gatsby: “[…] I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.”
Apparently, all of the Glass children were on a radio program called, “It’s A Wise Child.” Later in the book there is a fascinating discussion of knowledge, wisdom, and the higher education system.
On page 160: “He was a great and modest scholar. And what’s more, I don’t think I ever heard him say anything, either in or out of a classroom, that didn’t seem to me to have a little bit of real wisdom in it—and sometimes a lot of it.”
Although the paragraphs can be quite lengthy in Zooey, the reader is rewarded for his/her persistence if one enjoys “turning over [things] in [the] mind” as Nick Carraway would put it.
Bessie is the matriarch of the Glass Family, mother to all of the Glass children. While Zooey is taking a bath, she bursts in and doesn’t leave despite repeated requests.
This reminds me of The Last Chairlift by John Irving. The main character is Adam, and his mother appears to be a very devoted, kind, loving person except she behaves slightly inappropriately with Adam, kissing him full on the mouth in bed. In an interview, Irving responded, “The character should be imperfect because that’s what makes them human.” (I’m probably paraphrasing as I was madly writing this down during a live author event.)
While Bessie and Les long for the nostalgic days of yesteryear when the children were on “It’s A Wise Child,” the children take a very different view, blaming it for turning them into freaks.
Zooey also has a thought-provoking conversation with Franny about her spiritual transformation. He reminds her of Matthew, Chapter 6 where Franny disagreed with Jesus about something, begging the question, even if this spiritual transformation works, would she be happy with the end result?
By the way, Matthew Chapter 6 does not contain the synagogue scene with Jesus overturning the tables. Always check your sources!
Bear with me a moment. Alas, I need to throw in one last reference to Fitzgerald.
In Franny and Zooey (page 98), “Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines.” While on page 5 of The Great Gatsby, “I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News.”
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino
That’s this book.
One last last thought…yes, I know. Groaning, gnashing of teeth, shuffling of feet.
On page 115, there is mention of an “orange stick” and on page 159 “tangerine.” Clearly, some symbolism was magically floating just outside the wake of my literary grasp.
Thanks to a fortunate stroke of serendipity, I started reading A Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess stated in the introduction that a clockwork orange has “the appearance of an organism but is only wound up by God or The State.”
Side Note: Who is the more pompous, haughty intellectual: Lane or Salinger?
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text - $10.89 from Amazon
2025 Reading Schedule
Jan A Town Like Alice
Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
Aug Jude the Obscure
Sep Ulysses
Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
Dec Germinal
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F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fingerprints are all over this. If you like Fitzgerald’s prose, look no further.
Salinger toys with readers, and I am here for it.
Allow me to provide some context for the discussion of this book. Franny and Zooey are two short stories published in 1961.
Franny is the first short story written in the third person perspective. The prose is absolutely delicious, and the quotes are extraordinary.
First sentence: Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it has been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend—the weekend of the Yale game.
Yale…..just like our friend, Nick Carraway of The Great Gatsby (page 3 of the first edition, “I graduated from New Haven (aka Yale) in 1915.���)
Now, let’s take a look at some gorgeous prose/lines. Shall we?
Lane, who knew Sorenson, only slightly but had a vague, categorical aversion to his face […]. Page 6.
“Lovely,” she said with enthusiasm. Page 9.
“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful.” Page 19.
“You like Wally.”
“I don’t even know who he is.”
“You’ve met him about twenty times, for God’s sake.” Page 24.
See those beautiful contractions. Ahem…..this is also how Fitzgerald makes his prose smooth.
In the short story of Franny, Lane, Franny’s boyfriend, is droning on and on about an essay he wrote about Flaubert. Although Lane is supposed to come across as a pompous, haughty intellectual, I actually wrote an essay on Flaubert myself so I wanted to hear more….hmm, does that make me a pompous, haughty intellectual?
But I digress…..
Meanwhile, Franny is having an inner crisis. She has been reading, The Way of a Pilgrim, where if a certain prayer is repeated enough times, the words will synchronize with the heartbeat (page 36)—she is contemplating a transformation, to be different.
Franny says, “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” Page 30.
This reminds me of Becky Chambers in A Psalm for the Wild-Built:
You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.
“Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful.”
Franny also says (page 38):
“I didn’t say I believed it or I didn’t believe it,” She said, and scanned the table for the folder of materials. “I said it was fascinating.”
Sounds eerily familiar to this line from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde:
“I didn’t say I liked it, I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”
Zooey is the second short story, and it takes a first-person perspective. Zooey is the slightly older brother to Franny. He is an actor and a recovering child prodigy.
First line: The facts at hand presumably speak for themselves, but a trifle more vulgarly, I suspect than facts even usually do.
On page 48, I noticed the word “shrill.” This is a word used quite a bit in The Great Gatsby, and look page 49, The Great Gatsby finally breaks into the short story and is called out by name.
Page 58, “I was a proper snob in college.” While in The Great Gatsby, “I snobbishly repeat…”
Page 181: “It was as though marionette strings has been attached to him and given an overzealous yank.” The Great Gatsby: “[…] I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair.”
Apparently, all of the Glass children were on a radio program called, “It’s A Wise Child.” Later in the book there is a fascinating discussion of knowledge, wisdom, and the higher education system.
On page 160: “He was a great and modest scholar. And what’s more, I don’t think I ever heard him say anything, either in or out of a classroom, that didn’t seem to me to have a little bit of real wisdom in it—and sometimes a lot of it.”
Although the paragraphs can be quite lengthy in Zooey, the reader is rewarded for his/her persistence if one enjoys “turning over [things] in [the] mind” as Nick Carraway would put it.
Bessie is the matriarch of the Glass Family, mother to all of the Glass children. While Zooey is taking a bath, she bursts in and doesn’t leave despite repeated requests.
This reminds me of The Last Chairlift by John Irving. The main character is Adam, and his mother appears to be a very devoted, kind, loving person except she behaves slightly inappropriately with Adam, kissing him full on the mouth in bed. In an interview, Irving responded, “The character should be imperfect because that’s what makes them human.” (I’m probably paraphrasing as I was madly writing this down during a live author event.)
While Bessie and Les long for the nostalgic days of yesteryear when the children were on “It’s A Wise Child,” the children take a very different view, blaming it for turning them into freaks.
Zooey also has a thought-provoking conversation with Franny about her spiritual transformation. He reminds her of Matthew, Chapter 6 where Franny disagreed with Jesus about something, begging the question, even if this spiritual transformation works, would she be happy with the end result?
By the way, Matthew Chapter 6 does not contain the synagogue scene with Jesus overturning the tables. Always check your sources!
Bear with me a moment. Alas, I need to throw in one last reference to Fitzgerald.
In Franny and Zooey (page 98), “Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines.” While on page 5 of The Great Gatsby, “I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News.”
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino
That’s this book.
One last last thought…yes, I know. Groaning, gnashing of teeth, shuffling of feet.
On page 115, there is mention of an “orange stick” and on page 159 “tangerine.” Clearly, some symbolism was magically floating just outside the wake of my literary grasp.
Thanks to a fortunate stroke of serendipity, I started reading A Clockwork Orange. Anthony Burgess stated in the introduction that a clockwork orange has “the appearance of an organism but is only wound up by God or The State.”
Side Note: Who is the more pompous, haughty intellectual: Lane or Salinger?
The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Softcover Text - $10.89 from Amazon
2025 Reading Schedule
Jan A Town Like Alice
Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
Aug Jude the Obscure
Sep Ulysses
Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
Dec Germinal
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November 15, 2024
I read this marvellous book in the winter of 1973-74 and it marked for me a moment at which my adult intelligence was crystallized. The product was a plodding, alienated way of thinking that marked me with a modern label: a keenly sensitive existentialist.
Oh, not so sensitive as I’ve become, many, many books of life stories later.
I was still a chrysalis that hadn’t yet broken open into the world’s stark terror. Like Franny. A child of Pax Americana. Alone and isolated and struggling to come to terms with the vast echoes of an uncaring world.
Echoes only - for I was at that early stage of a very conditioned adaptation to that world: the stage of the sudden irruption of a lately-teenaged self into organized lonely chaos. Ah, the days of youth. Days when I could still romanticize my struggle in Whitmanesque language!
At night, after work at my first fulltime job after uni, I sat before my little red plastic Sony B&W TV, and watched pseudo-existential mush like Kojak - or, in better taste - the stark early films of Ingmar Bergman on the weekends.
But here’s the thing. It took me a lifetime of anxiety before I would be finally able to turf the Ego-Ring of Self along with Frodo - at his last stop: Mount Doom.
The nightmare of Mount Doom had appeared irrevocably to Salinger’s Seymours and Zooeys, as it started to do to me at twenty, though in a dreaming state. Luckily, for I was never as bright as the Glass wiz-kids.
My cauchemars of Mount Doom would always be dispelled into the convenient mists provided by my mood stabilizers.
I wake to sleep,
And take my waking slow.
Is it any wonder Theodore Roethke was such a guiding light to me back then? But Roethke never turfed his Ring.
Through a lifetime of prayer and meditation, I was able, finally to say my good-byes to all its black magic.
As Eliot reminded me so often, “humility is endless.”
But Franny and her too-bright siblings are justifiably proud.
For the world’s taste, if not for God’s.
But what business does God have in a jarringly alienated Salinger Universe?
None whatever.
So they say.
Oh, not so sensitive as I’ve become, many, many books of life stories later.
I was still a chrysalis that hadn’t yet broken open into the world’s stark terror. Like Franny. A child of Pax Americana. Alone and isolated and struggling to come to terms with the vast echoes of an uncaring world.
Echoes only - for I was at that early stage of a very conditioned adaptation to that world: the stage of the sudden irruption of a lately-teenaged self into organized lonely chaos. Ah, the days of youth. Days when I could still romanticize my struggle in Whitmanesque language!
At night, after work at my first fulltime job after uni, I sat before my little red plastic Sony B&W TV, and watched pseudo-existential mush like Kojak - or, in better taste - the stark early films of Ingmar Bergman on the weekends.
But here’s the thing. It took me a lifetime of anxiety before I would be finally able to turf the Ego-Ring of Self along with Frodo - at his last stop: Mount Doom.
The nightmare of Mount Doom had appeared irrevocably to Salinger’s Seymours and Zooeys, as it started to do to me at twenty, though in a dreaming state. Luckily, for I was never as bright as the Glass wiz-kids.
My cauchemars of Mount Doom would always be dispelled into the convenient mists provided by my mood stabilizers.
I wake to sleep,
And take my waking slow.
Is it any wonder Theodore Roethke was such a guiding light to me back then? But Roethke never turfed his Ring.
Through a lifetime of prayer and meditation, I was able, finally to say my good-byes to all its black magic.
As Eliot reminded me so often, “humility is endless.”
But Franny and her too-bright siblings are justifiably proud.
For the world’s taste, if not for God’s.
But what business does God have in a jarringly alienated Salinger Universe?
None whatever.
So they say.
May 15, 2019
من
توى يک مهمانى، در اتاقى در بسته تمامش كردم. بعد موقع برگشت، كتاب را كردم توى شلوارم و با پاى برهنه توى خيابان خلوت ساعت سه صبح قدم زدم، و به اين فكر كردم كه من دقيقاً به دنبال چى هستم؟
فرانی
فرانی دختری است تحصیلکرده و باهوش (خصوصیت مشترک همه ی خانواده ی گلاس) که از قشر روشنفکر که خودش هم جزئی از آن است بیزار است، از خودشیفتگی ها و "ایگو"هاشان، از بدبینی های دائم و نمایشی شان به همه چیز، از غر زدن های ناتمام شان، و از همه ی خصوصیات دیگر نفرت انگیز این قشر. این نفرت از خود و اضطراب ها و اندوه های دیگر، همه دست به دست هم داده اند و او را به نوعی عرفان سوق داده اند، عرفانی که خودش هم چندان شناخت درستی از ماهیت آن ندارد، و فقط می خواهد روح ناآرام و معترضش را به وسیله ای آرام کند.
زویی
زویی، برادر فرانی، یکی از همان کسانی است که به راحتی می تواند مورد نفرت خواهرش واقع شود. روشنفکری سرشار از خودشیفتگی، بدبینی به همه چیز، طعنه و کنایه زدن و غر زدن های ناتمام. با این فرق که زویی شناختی از عرفان، این آخرین دست آویز فرانی، دارد که فرانی از آن بی خبر است. زویی خود دوره ای از این پناه بردن افراطی به ماوراء را از سر گذرانده است و در گذار سالیان، به شکل تعدیل شده ای از آن ایمان آورده است: پناه بردن به زندگی با همه ی مظاهر آن.
تمام زیبایی و اهمیت کتاب، در بیست سی صفحه ی انتهایی است، که زویی طی بحثی پر شور با فرانی، اشکالات عرفانش را به او نشان می دهد و او را به زندگی باز می گرداند. بسیاری از حرف های زویی، به قدری جای درستی را نشانه گرفته اند، که می شود مطمئن بود نویسنده خودش چنین دوره ی عرفانی را از سر گذرانده و این حاصل تفکرات طولانی خودش است که به رشته ی تحریر درآورده است.
سیمور و بادی و بوبو و والت و ویکر
سالینجر به زندگی این فرزندان غایب خانواده ی گلاس در داستان های کوتاه دیگر پرداخته است، که متأسفانه من آن ها را نخوانده ام. از آن جا که هر یک از این داستان های کوتاه تنها بخشی از سرنوشت خاندان گلاس را به نمایش می گذارند، به نظرم جا دارد که مجموع آن ها به همراه فرانی و زویی در یک کتاب چاپ شوند، به طوری که این پازل چهل تکه تصویر جامعی از این خانواده ی سرخورده ی نیویورکی ارائه دهد.
یادداشت های پراکنده
توى يک مهمانى، در اتاقى در بسته تمامش كردم. بعد موقع برگشت، كتاب را كردم توى شلوارم و با پاى برهنه توى خيابان خلوت ساعت سه صبح قدم زدم، و به اين فكر كردم كه من دقيقاً به دنبال چى هستم؟
فرانی
فرانی دختری است تحصیلکرده و باهوش (خصوصیت مشترک همه ی خانواده ی گلاس) که از قشر روشنفکر که خودش هم جزئی از آن است بیزار است، از خودشیفتگی ها و "ایگو"هاشان، از بدبینی های دائم و نمایشی شان به همه چیز، از غر زدن های ناتمام شان، و از همه ی خصوصیات دیگر نفرت انگیز این قشر. این نفرت از خود و اضطراب ها و اندوه های دیگر، همه دست به دست هم داده اند و او را به نوعی عرفان سوق داده اند، عرفانی که خودش هم چندان شناخت درستی از ماهیت آن ندارد، و فقط می خواهد روح ناآرام و معترضش را به وسیله ای آرام کند.
زویی
زویی، برادر فرانی، یکی از همان کسانی است که به راحتی می تواند مورد نفرت خواهرش واقع شود. روشنفکری سرشار از خودشیفتگی، بدبینی به همه چیز، طعنه و کنایه زدن و غر زدن های ناتمام. با این فرق که زویی شناختی از عرفان، این آخرین دست آویز فرانی، دارد که فرانی از آن بی خبر است. زویی خود دوره ای از این پناه بردن افراطی به ماوراء را از سر گذرانده است و در گذار سالیان، به شکل تعدیل شده ای از آن ایمان آورده است: پناه بردن به زندگی با همه ی مظاهر آن.
تمام زیبایی و اهمیت کتاب، در بیست سی صفحه ی انتهایی است، که زویی طی بحثی پر شور با فرانی، اشکالات عرفانش را به او نشان می دهد و او را به زندگی باز می گرداند. بسیاری از حرف های زویی، به قدری جای درستی را نشانه گرفته اند، که می شود مطمئن بود نویسنده خودش چنین دوره ی عرفانی را از سر گذرانده و این حاصل تفکرات طولانی خودش است که به رشته ی تحریر درآورده است.
سیمور و بادی و بوبو و والت و ویکر
سالینجر به زندگی این فرزندان غایب خانواده ی گلاس در داستان های کوتاه دیگر پرداخته است، که متأسفانه من آن ها را نخوانده ام. از آن جا که هر یک از این داستان های کوتاه تنها بخشی از سرنوشت خاندان گلاس را به نمایش می گذارند، به نظرم جا دارد که مجموع آن ها به همراه فرانی و زویی در یک کتاب چاپ شوند، به طوری که این پازل چهل تکه تصویر جامعی از این خانواده ی سرخورده ی نیویورکی ارائه دهد.
یادداشت های پراکنده
January 25, 2022
(Book 445 from 1001 books) - Franny And Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Franny and Zooey is a book by American author J. D. Salinger which comprises his short story "Franny" and novella Zooey. The two works were published together as a book in 1961, having originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957 respectively. The book focuses on siblings Franny and Zooey, the two youngest members of the Glass family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «فرانی و زویی»؛ «فرنی و زویی»؛ «فرنی و زویی همراه با شرح اسامی مکانها و حوادث و یادداشت...»؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه اکتبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: فرانی و زویی؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: میلاد زکریا؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، سال1380؛ در185ص؛ شابک9789643055875؛ چاپ ششم سال1386؛ چاپ هفتم سال1387؛ چتپ یازدهم سال1392؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
عنوان: فرنی و زویی؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: امید نیک فرجام؛ تهران، نیلا، سال1381؛ در157ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1383؛ چاپ سوم سال1385؛ چاپ پنجم سال1392؛ شابک9789646900400؛
عنوان: فرنی و زویی همراه با شرح اسامی مکانها و حوادث و یادداشت...؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: علی شیعه علی؛ زهرا میرباقری؛ تهران، سبزان، سال1390؛ چاپ دوم سال1392؛ در223ص؛ شابک9786001170638؛
کتاب دارای دو داستان کوتاه با عنوانهای: «فرانی» و «زویی» است؛ داستان نخست، شرح دیدار پایان هفتهٔ ی «فرانی گلس»، کوچکترین عضو خانواده ی «گلس»، با دوست پسرش، «لین کاتل» است؛ «فرانی» ادبیات میخواند، و همانند سایر فرزندان خانوادهٔ «گلس» علاقهٔ ویژه ای به عرفان شرقی دارد؛ «فرانی» در پی خوانش یک کتاب عرفانی، دچار بحرانی روحی و عرفانی شده است
داستان دوم، زمانی را به تصویر میکشد، که «فرانی»، از دانشگاه به خانه برگشته، و اعضای خانواده اش، هر یک به شیوه ی خود، برای بهبودی «فرانی» تلاش میکنند؛ برادرش «زویی»، که بازیگری بیست و پنج ساله است، در این داستان نقش پررنگ و موثری دارد؛ سایر اعضای خانواده ی او نیز، در این داستان تا حدودی معرفی و شناخته میشوند؛ «سیمور»، بزرگترین پسر خانواده، که به نوعی مرشد و قدیس آنها به شمار میآید، خودکشی کرده است؛ «بادی»، پسر دوم است که پس از «سیمور»، نقشی حیاتی در زندگی فرزندان کوچکتر ایفا میکند؛ او در حالتی رهبانی و در گوشه ای پرت، زندگی و در یک مدرسه ی عالی دخترانه، تدریس میکند؛ پس از ایشان هم یک دختر، و دوقلوهای پسری قرار دارند، که به نسبت سایرین نقش کمرنگتری در داستان دارند؛ خانوادهٔ «گلس» در دیگر داستانهای «سالینجر» نیز حضور دارند؛ گرچه ایشان به دنبال ارائه ی تصویر کامل از این خانواده نیستند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Franny and Zooey is a book by American author J. D. Salinger which comprises his short story "Franny" and novella Zooey. The two works were published together as a book in 1961, having originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957 respectively. The book focuses on siblings Franny and Zooey, the two youngest members of the Glass family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «فرانی و زویی»؛ «فرنی و زویی»؛ «فرنی و زویی همراه با شرح اسامی مکانها و حوادث و یادداشت...»؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه اکتبر سال2001میلادی
عنوان: فرانی و زویی؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: میلاد زکریا؛ تهران، نشر مرکز، سال1380؛ در185ص؛ شابک9789643055875؛ چاپ ششم سال1386؛ چاپ هفتم سال1387؛ چتپ یازدهم سال1392؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده20م
عنوان: فرنی و زویی؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: امید نیک فرجام؛ تهران، نیلا، سال1381؛ در157ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1383؛ چاپ سوم سال1385؛ چاپ پنجم سال1392؛ شابک9789646900400؛
عنوان: فرنی و زویی همراه با شرح اسامی مکانها و حوادث و یادداشت...؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر؛ مترجم: علی شیعه علی؛ زهرا میرباقری؛ تهران، سبزان، سال1390؛ چاپ دوم سال1392؛ در223ص؛ شابک9786001170638؛
کتاب دارای دو داستان کوتاه با عنوانهای: «فرانی» و «زویی» است؛ داستان نخست، شرح دیدار پایان هفتهٔ ی «فرانی گلس»، کوچکترین عضو خانواده ی «گلس»، با دوست پسرش، «لین کاتل» است؛ «فرانی» ادبیات میخواند، و همانند سایر فرزندان خانوادهٔ «گلس» علاقهٔ ویژه ای به عرفان شرقی دارد؛ «فرانی» در پی خوانش یک کتاب عرفانی، دچار بحرانی روحی و عرفانی شده است
داستان دوم، زمانی را به تصویر میکشد، که «فرانی»، از دانشگاه به خانه برگشته، و اعضای خانواده اش، هر یک به شیوه ی خود، برای بهبودی «فرانی» تلاش میکنند؛ برادرش «زویی»، که بازیگری بیست و پنج ساله است، در این داستان نقش پررنگ و موثری دارد؛ سایر اعضای خانواده ی او نیز، در این داستان تا حدودی معرفی و شناخته میشوند؛ «سیمور»، بزرگترین پسر خانواده، که به نوعی مرشد و قدیس آنها به شمار میآید، خودکشی کرده است؛ «بادی»، پسر دوم است که پس از «سیمور»، نقشی حیاتی در زندگی فرزندان کوچکتر ایفا میکند؛ او در حالتی رهبانی و در گوشه ای پرت، زندگی و در یک مدرسه ی عالی دخترانه، تدریس میکند؛ پس از ایشان هم یک دختر، و دوقلوهای پسری قرار دارند، که به نسبت سایرین نقش کمرنگتری در داستان دارند؛ خانوادهٔ «گلس» در دیگر داستانهای «سالینجر» نیز حضور دارند؛ گرچه ایشان به دنبال ارائه ی تصویر کامل از این خانواده نیستند
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/11/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
February 25, 2023
So, this semester I am teaching a course on postwar American novels. I am basically a former high school English teacher who became an English educator (preparing people to become English teachers themselves), and only relatively recently have been asked to teach “straight” lit courses at my university as I usually have taught methods (of teaching) classes (though also YA and Graphic Novels) in the past quarter century. I just turned 61, and have not read many of these novels for this course for literally decades, many of them since I was in my early twenties, when they were truly identity-forming for me as reader, teacher (less so this because I have almost taught none of them in all my nearly forty years of teaching), and person, for sure. I see them now as Great Books, but not quite in the classical canon sense, because when I think of the Canon I first think of Shakespeare and Milton and not Kerouac and Heller. Prior to teaching this course I thought of the period (1945-1980) as basically the Beats (fifties, drugs and self) and Hippies (sixties and early seventies, drugs and social causes) and Beyond (some postmodern stuff, less chemical and more fictional experimentation), basically.
When I first began choosing the books for this course I went to Goodreads lists and picked out maybe 75 American novels I thought were “important” for one reason or the other in the years 1945-1980. I knew we could only read 12-14 of them, and I knew some of them might be pretty long, so I starred ones on my list that I really wanted to re-read, books I had loved, and came up with maybe 18-20. My thinking at this point was that the course would be (for my private, unspoken purposes, anyway) kind of about ME, a kind of Re-reading My Self experience, reading as autobiography, as in: What do I recall these books meant to me then, how did I understand them, and how do I read them differently now? Who do I think I was then, who do I think I am now, and how did/do these books figure in the process? Shoshana Felman wrote a book called What Does a Woman Want?: Reading and Sexual Difference which among other things makes the point that with some books, they are essentially autobiographical, that we read ourselves in and through them so much that we see them as telling our own stories. In her book she illustrates this by telling stories about some of her favorite books. I like that. Reading a book through your life, in part, with some books, at least. And for the process I even have some old copies of texts with underlined passages and margin commentary from the old days! Cool, right?
Most college courses are probably usually like that in some ways, in that they are all about the teacher’s project or research or obsessions, so it wouldn’t be weird for students to experience a class like that (though most college English classes have nothing to do with reader response or subjective readings of texts, they are all about close readings or some postmodern theoretical frame for the reading), but I have not usually done things this way, thinking it as kind of narcissistic, so I changed my mind and did what I often do, I invited the registered students to help me choose the books. It wouldn't just be about me, then. About half of the students enthusiastically participated; I went with their enthusiastic choices of certain books even if they were not on my primo list, though I did keep a few from my own original list. I also ended up with a couple on the final list I had never read, which is cool.
Oh, the course reading list? Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Nabokov’s Lolita, Kerouac’s On the Road, Plath’s The Bell Jar, Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Heller’s Catch 22, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow {which was our last book, so we only began reading it, maybe half], Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Mailer’s Executioner’s Song [which we did not end up reading]. Lots of white men, you say? Guilty as charged, but then a lot of male and female students and some students of color helped me! What follows is about the first book we read in this course.
Postwar Novel Story #1: Franny and Zooey is usually the book you read after you join the 60? 90? million people who have read Catcher in the Rye. If you hate Holden, this will end your Salinger journey, but for those of us who felt/feel he speaks for us in naming all the phoniness in the world, we next read the somewhat kinder, gentler Franny and Zooey, and especially fall in love with Franny, the female Holden, a fragile, driven-to-nervous-breakdown early twenties kid, more like Holden than Zooey, Franny's somewhat harsher but also more insightful older brother. In fact (and this is a Salingerism to say things like “in fact”) you see Holden (and probably Salinger himself?) in all the Glass family (suicidal Seymour; Buddy, the writer/recluse who retreats to the New Hampshire woods; 20 something drop-out, “nervous breakdown” actress Franny, and commercially successful but self-and other-loathing 25-year-old Zooey).
No plot summary will I write, but the two separate but related stories that comprise this collection are the separately published (in The New Yorker, 1955) “Franny” which is about a meeting with her current hilariously phony boyfriend Lane in The City, focusing on Franny in spiritual/psychological crisis, and “Zooey,” (published two years later, also in The New Yorker) focusing on the family’s attempts at intervention into Franny’s crisis, while also addressing Zooey’s very related crisis. Both are kinda early twenties stuck, wondering how to live their lives with Purpose and Meaning, as I was then. There’s very little plot to tell even if were to try, actually; most of both stories are a series of extended dialogues, broken up mainly by a lot of chain smoking, but the dialogues are amazing, sometimes exasperating in that the Glass family is pretty messed-up, and self-absorbed, but also sometimes quite moving in that their struggles are spiritual, in response to a messed-up world, where the Glass kids find they are lost and struggling to find themselves in what Salinger and they saw as “pure” versions of spiritual truth such as Buddhist and Hindu notions of self-lessness (ideas Salinger was steeped in since the late forties until he died), which Franny finds imbedded in two books on “Christ-consciousness,” books about a pilgrim learning “the Jesus Prayer” (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”), which are also books about what it means to pray without ceasing, to become prayer/Christ/Buddha/Dharma/Satori, and so on.
Basically the concern is how to live a life of integrity, if not quite ethical commitment. Though it’s still more about self (and the goal of artistic perfection Salinger wanted for himself, free of Fame and Media and Buzz) than ethical commitment, though, really. It’s what you should do for yourself, how to become yourself, maybe even a better self. Individualism, one siren song of the fifties after all that patriotism and the war. But also spirituality, after a horrific world war. Back to life as usual? Salinger hopes not.
When I first read this book I had “borrowed” (and still have) it from the bedroom Marthena Bosch had vacated in what became my sister Shirley’s house in Holland, MI. Marthena was maybe fifteen years older than me, and had broken from the Dutch Reformed faith I was basically also raised in. She had books on her shelf like an edited collection of The Beats, On the Road, all of Salinger, Hesse, and books on Zen Buddhism. I consumed all of her books in the late sixties, in my late teens, and probably first read Franny after Catcher in my junior or senior year in high school. What political and spiritual turmoil the late sixties were for me, starting with books about race (from the sixties race riots, Black Like Me, Nigger by Dick Gregory, Dr. King’s works, Malcolm X); the women’s movement (I actually read Marthena’s copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvior at 16 to find out something about feminism, all this bra-burning and female anger I was startled to see, and this type of person--a girl--that aside from my sisters and mom I had absolutely no experience with); the Vietnam War (I drove to Ann Arbor to encounter the SDS, Weatherman, Black Power, Marx, Mao, anti-war protests, and read books on all these topics), and great psychedelic and angry and ecstatic folk rock music, always going to concerts. Dylan, Joni, CSNY.
I had been raised to attend this very conservative Calvinist church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, going to church twice every Sunday, made to go to a Christian high school and then chose to go to Calvin College because my friends were going there, and I even started out my teaching in Christian high schools, but all my teens and twenties were more about spiritual struggle, about doubt, than pure faith, and ultimately I sought how to live a spiritual and ethical life without the shackles of Calvinist religion. Or any religion, having left the church finally at 28, though at 18 I was pretty God-haunted, wanting to live as Christ, which for me was something like what I learned from Franny and Zooey, to live without ego, to live for others. Franny’s cry against ego, ego, ego was a struggle for me because I liked acting and writing stories and getting published and had set a goal to have a book of fiction published in my twenties, and Zooey’s commitment to living a life focused on perfecting a devotion not to fame but to art (for him and Franny, acting, for Buddy and me, writing) made sense for me. I struggled with the inherently self-ish nature of art/writing (writing fiction was really all about me in many ways) versus the Dr. King-commitment to changing the world (through teaching), and I still write and teach and try to balance these things. Is it okay to write a poem about myself or would it be better to write a story about students in an urban classroom? Are both okay?
I was struck in this present reading of the book that Salinger has two basic “ghosts” in the “machine” of his art; one is the war, since he served in WW II and was part of the liberation of concentration camps and fought at D Day and other significant battles. His turn to Zen and Hinduism is a turn away from the enlightenment Reason that had led to the Holocaust and Hiroshima, that Drive to Certainty that led/leads to Corporate America and the Military-Industrial Complex. So much Darkness. So he writes of Buddy’s retreat from consumerism and mass media that became his own retreat, and Franny and Zooey help us see self-lessness as a remedy for the madness of the world.
A second ghost in Salinger’s work is Innocence, Beauty, something the War ended for the world in many ways, and very specifically ended for him personally when the girl he had loved at 20, 16-year-old Oona O’Neill, left him for Charlie Chaplin when he was abroad fighting the War. Salinger is severely criticized by some for his lifelong interest in younger women, but the way I see it work out in his fiction is that young children, and maybe particularly girls, okay, come to symbolize innocence for him, beauty, things that got destroyed by the war and the adult world, generally, so in this book you see Buddy, Seymour, Zooey, all notice young girls and sort of hold them up with some frail hope as what we must in some sense hold on to (innocence, I mean): (“We got to get ourselves back to the Garden,” Joni Mitchell says).
Holden wants to play catcher in the rye to save children from growing up and going crazy from phoniness and materialism and selfishness and Franny is just entering adulthood and is seeing the emptiness of much of the (post war) self-absorbed world and so is Zooey who has had five years of “success” in it. It’s hard to have integrity in this world, they seem to say, and I feel the same way as I did then about this: I agree with them.
When I first read this book I think part of my attraction to it was class-envy, too. I was a working-class kid whose Dad worked himself to the bone every day, long days, all his life, and I wanted a more contemplative, artistic live with plenty of time for reading, writing and reflection. Franny and Zooey were messed up in certain ways, sure, but they seemed to have enough leisure to spend time talking about Big Ideas and Purpose and the Meaning of Life, and because they were Educated, and in the upper-middle-class, they had time for that. My parents and siblings were high school graduates and weren’t into reading or the arts (except sis N, an artist) or serving the world like social workers or teachers did, and like I was considering doing. I knew I needed college to help me carve out a scholarly/artistic life. When I read Franny now I can see that class envy I had. I wanted that life of privilege, not necessarily money but the time and space to live a life some might describe as one of "leisure," though I wanted some kind of authentic spiritual life, too, of living for others. I was still In the Church and hoping to find a way to Be Me in it. So I didn't think of the Glass family as merely rich and privileged whiny kids as many do now in reading them; I saw them as having a life of ideas I wanted for myself.
Now as I read Franny and Zooey again I feel a little nostalgic for the explicit struggles with faith and religion that I had then. Franny’s struggle makes me long for that, moves me, makes me realize my life is missing something. Maybe, I think, I need a little of that praying-without-ceasing stuff that my friend Tony is experiencing in his Grand Rapids urban ministry. Zooey inspires me to live that better spiritual life, anyway. While I did not choose it, Salinger’s retreat from NYC makes perfect sense to me now. The struggle for Salinger and Buddy and Zooey was to live life without arrogance (okay, Zooey’s a little blunt and even a little mean to Bessie, and Franny, even when he is right), without being judgmental, which I find pretty difficult to do in this Tea Party world.
What do I learn or relearn about teaching and learning from it? I relearn there’s a big difference between knowledge and wisdom, and that schools generally teach the former without the latter, which is what gets us in so much Trouble. I relearn that sometimes the Eastern “no knowledge” or unknowing would be better for us than the certainty that leads to arrogance. That being good and doing good teaching and writing and art without ego if at all possible is better than any honor or award or accomplishment or even paycheck. There’s a Dr. Tupper that teaches Franny who is actually a fraud, a fake, a pretentious academic phony. That's no way to teach and learn! I loved this book then and love it even more now as I think I understand it better. It’s a kind of teaching book with a moral to it, but it’s one I like.
And what gorgeous writing there is in this book, with terrific dialogue, especially, completely convincing and real to me. The Glass family is a kind of prototype for the Royal Tenenbaum family, too, in many ways, all these precocious, f’ed up rich kids never really quite adjusting to the world. Dealing with the madness of the world in ways that bring them close to madness. My reading and teaching have come full circle back to issues of self (in good ways) they hadn’t really seen in any focused way for decades. I’m glad for the trip back and forward now through the reading. Oh, and I just saw the recent Salinger biography after I read it which I thought was terrible on the whole but still sometimes interesting. Leave him alone, we say, it's his choice, but we still obsess about him and want to talk with him.
When I first began choosing the books for this course I went to Goodreads lists and picked out maybe 75 American novels I thought were “important” for one reason or the other in the years 1945-1980. I knew we could only read 12-14 of them, and I knew some of them might be pretty long, so I starred ones on my list that I really wanted to re-read, books I had loved, and came up with maybe 18-20. My thinking at this point was that the course would be (for my private, unspoken purposes, anyway) kind of about ME, a kind of Re-reading My Self experience, reading as autobiography, as in: What do I recall these books meant to me then, how did I understand them, and how do I read them differently now? Who do I think I was then, who do I think I am now, and how did/do these books figure in the process? Shoshana Felman wrote a book called What Does a Woman Want?: Reading and Sexual Difference which among other things makes the point that with some books, they are essentially autobiographical, that we read ourselves in and through them so much that we see them as telling our own stories. In her book she illustrates this by telling stories about some of her favorite books. I like that. Reading a book through your life, in part, with some books, at least. And for the process I even have some old copies of texts with underlined passages and margin commentary from the old days! Cool, right?
Most college courses are probably usually like that in some ways, in that they are all about the teacher’s project or research or obsessions, so it wouldn’t be weird for students to experience a class like that (though most college English classes have nothing to do with reader response or subjective readings of texts, they are all about close readings or some postmodern theoretical frame for the reading), but I have not usually done things this way, thinking it as kind of narcissistic, so I changed my mind and did what I often do, I invited the registered students to help me choose the books. It wouldn't just be about me, then. About half of the students enthusiastically participated; I went with their enthusiastic choices of certain books even if they were not on my primo list, though I did keep a few from my own original list. I also ended up with a couple on the final list I had never read, which is cool.
Oh, the course reading list? Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Nabokov’s Lolita, Kerouac’s On the Road, Plath’s The Bell Jar, Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Heller’s Catch 22, Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow {which was our last book, so we only began reading it, maybe half], Capote’s In Cold Blood, and Mailer’s Executioner’s Song [which we did not end up reading]. Lots of white men, you say? Guilty as charged, but then a lot of male and female students and some students of color helped me! What follows is about the first book we read in this course.
Postwar Novel Story #1: Franny and Zooey is usually the book you read after you join the 60? 90? million people who have read Catcher in the Rye. If you hate Holden, this will end your Salinger journey, but for those of us who felt/feel he speaks for us in naming all the phoniness in the world, we next read the somewhat kinder, gentler Franny and Zooey, and especially fall in love with Franny, the female Holden, a fragile, driven-to-nervous-breakdown early twenties kid, more like Holden than Zooey, Franny's somewhat harsher but also more insightful older brother. In fact (and this is a Salingerism to say things like “in fact”) you see Holden (and probably Salinger himself?) in all the Glass family (suicidal Seymour; Buddy, the writer/recluse who retreats to the New Hampshire woods; 20 something drop-out, “nervous breakdown” actress Franny, and commercially successful but self-and other-loathing 25-year-old Zooey).
No plot summary will I write, but the two separate but related stories that comprise this collection are the separately published (in The New Yorker, 1955) “Franny” which is about a meeting with her current hilariously phony boyfriend Lane in The City, focusing on Franny in spiritual/psychological crisis, and “Zooey,” (published two years later, also in The New Yorker) focusing on the family’s attempts at intervention into Franny’s crisis, while also addressing Zooey’s very related crisis. Both are kinda early twenties stuck, wondering how to live their lives with Purpose and Meaning, as I was then. There’s very little plot to tell even if were to try, actually; most of both stories are a series of extended dialogues, broken up mainly by a lot of chain smoking, but the dialogues are amazing, sometimes exasperating in that the Glass family is pretty messed-up, and self-absorbed, but also sometimes quite moving in that their struggles are spiritual, in response to a messed-up world, where the Glass kids find they are lost and struggling to find themselves in what Salinger and they saw as “pure” versions of spiritual truth such as Buddhist and Hindu notions of self-lessness (ideas Salinger was steeped in since the late forties until he died), which Franny finds imbedded in two books on “Christ-consciousness,” books about a pilgrim learning “the Jesus Prayer” (“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”), which are also books about what it means to pray without ceasing, to become prayer/Christ/Buddha/Dharma/Satori, and so on.
Basically the concern is how to live a life of integrity, if not quite ethical commitment. Though it’s still more about self (and the goal of artistic perfection Salinger wanted for himself, free of Fame and Media and Buzz) than ethical commitment, though, really. It’s what you should do for yourself, how to become yourself, maybe even a better self. Individualism, one siren song of the fifties after all that patriotism and the war. But also spirituality, after a horrific world war. Back to life as usual? Salinger hopes not.
When I first read this book I had “borrowed” (and still have) it from the bedroom Marthena Bosch had vacated in what became my sister Shirley’s house in Holland, MI. Marthena was maybe fifteen years older than me, and had broken from the Dutch Reformed faith I was basically also raised in. She had books on her shelf like an edited collection of The Beats, On the Road, all of Salinger, Hesse, and books on Zen Buddhism. I consumed all of her books in the late sixties, in my late teens, and probably first read Franny after Catcher in my junior or senior year in high school. What political and spiritual turmoil the late sixties were for me, starting with books about race (from the sixties race riots, Black Like Me, Nigger by Dick Gregory, Dr. King’s works, Malcolm X); the women’s movement (I actually read Marthena’s copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvior at 16 to find out something about feminism, all this bra-burning and female anger I was startled to see, and this type of person--a girl--that aside from my sisters and mom I had absolutely no experience with); the Vietnam War (I drove to Ann Arbor to encounter the SDS, Weatherman, Black Power, Marx, Mao, anti-war protests, and read books on all these topics), and great psychedelic and angry and ecstatic folk rock music, always going to concerts. Dylan, Joni, CSNY.
I had been raised to attend this very conservative Calvinist church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, going to church twice every Sunday, made to go to a Christian high school and then chose to go to Calvin College because my friends were going there, and I even started out my teaching in Christian high schools, but all my teens and twenties were more about spiritual struggle, about doubt, than pure faith, and ultimately I sought how to live a spiritual and ethical life without the shackles of Calvinist religion. Or any religion, having left the church finally at 28, though at 18 I was pretty God-haunted, wanting to live as Christ, which for me was something like what I learned from Franny and Zooey, to live without ego, to live for others. Franny’s cry against ego, ego, ego was a struggle for me because I liked acting and writing stories and getting published and had set a goal to have a book of fiction published in my twenties, and Zooey’s commitment to living a life focused on perfecting a devotion not to fame but to art (for him and Franny, acting, for Buddy and me, writing) made sense for me. I struggled with the inherently self-ish nature of art/writing (writing fiction was really all about me in many ways) versus the Dr. King-commitment to changing the world (through teaching), and I still write and teach and try to balance these things. Is it okay to write a poem about myself or would it be better to write a story about students in an urban classroom? Are both okay?
I was struck in this present reading of the book that Salinger has two basic “ghosts” in the “machine” of his art; one is the war, since he served in WW II and was part of the liberation of concentration camps and fought at D Day and other significant battles. His turn to Zen and Hinduism is a turn away from the enlightenment Reason that had led to the Holocaust and Hiroshima, that Drive to Certainty that led/leads to Corporate America and the Military-Industrial Complex. So much Darkness. So he writes of Buddy’s retreat from consumerism and mass media that became his own retreat, and Franny and Zooey help us see self-lessness as a remedy for the madness of the world.
A second ghost in Salinger’s work is Innocence, Beauty, something the War ended for the world in many ways, and very specifically ended for him personally when the girl he had loved at 20, 16-year-old Oona O’Neill, left him for Charlie Chaplin when he was abroad fighting the War. Salinger is severely criticized by some for his lifelong interest in younger women, but the way I see it work out in his fiction is that young children, and maybe particularly girls, okay, come to symbolize innocence for him, beauty, things that got destroyed by the war and the adult world, generally, so in this book you see Buddy, Seymour, Zooey, all notice young girls and sort of hold them up with some frail hope as what we must in some sense hold on to (innocence, I mean): (“We got to get ourselves back to the Garden,” Joni Mitchell says).
Holden wants to play catcher in the rye to save children from growing up and going crazy from phoniness and materialism and selfishness and Franny is just entering adulthood and is seeing the emptiness of much of the (post war) self-absorbed world and so is Zooey who has had five years of “success” in it. It’s hard to have integrity in this world, they seem to say, and I feel the same way as I did then about this: I agree with them.
When I first read this book I think part of my attraction to it was class-envy, too. I was a working-class kid whose Dad worked himself to the bone every day, long days, all his life, and I wanted a more contemplative, artistic live with plenty of time for reading, writing and reflection. Franny and Zooey were messed up in certain ways, sure, but they seemed to have enough leisure to spend time talking about Big Ideas and Purpose and the Meaning of Life, and because they were Educated, and in the upper-middle-class, they had time for that. My parents and siblings were high school graduates and weren’t into reading or the arts (except sis N, an artist) or serving the world like social workers or teachers did, and like I was considering doing. I knew I needed college to help me carve out a scholarly/artistic life. When I read Franny now I can see that class envy I had. I wanted that life of privilege, not necessarily money but the time and space to live a life some might describe as one of "leisure," though I wanted some kind of authentic spiritual life, too, of living for others. I was still In the Church and hoping to find a way to Be Me in it. So I didn't think of the Glass family as merely rich and privileged whiny kids as many do now in reading them; I saw them as having a life of ideas I wanted for myself.
Now as I read Franny and Zooey again I feel a little nostalgic for the explicit struggles with faith and religion that I had then. Franny’s struggle makes me long for that, moves me, makes me realize my life is missing something. Maybe, I think, I need a little of that praying-without-ceasing stuff that my friend Tony is experiencing in his Grand Rapids urban ministry. Zooey inspires me to live that better spiritual life, anyway. While I did not choose it, Salinger’s retreat from NYC makes perfect sense to me now. The struggle for Salinger and Buddy and Zooey was to live life without arrogance (okay, Zooey’s a little blunt and even a little mean to Bessie, and Franny, even when he is right), without being judgmental, which I find pretty difficult to do in this Tea Party world.
What do I learn or relearn about teaching and learning from it? I relearn there’s a big difference between knowledge and wisdom, and that schools generally teach the former without the latter, which is what gets us in so much Trouble. I relearn that sometimes the Eastern “no knowledge” or unknowing would be better for us than the certainty that leads to arrogance. That being good and doing good teaching and writing and art without ego if at all possible is better than any honor or award or accomplishment or even paycheck. There’s a Dr. Tupper that teaches Franny who is actually a fraud, a fake, a pretentious academic phony. That's no way to teach and learn! I loved this book then and love it even more now as I think I understand it better. It’s a kind of teaching book with a moral to it, but it’s one I like.
And what gorgeous writing there is in this book, with terrific dialogue, especially, completely convincing and real to me. The Glass family is a kind of prototype for the Royal Tenenbaum family, too, in many ways, all these precocious, f’ed up rich kids never really quite adjusting to the world. Dealing with the madness of the world in ways that bring them close to madness. My reading and teaching have come full circle back to issues of self (in good ways) they hadn’t really seen in any focused way for decades. I’m glad for the trip back and forward now through the reading. Oh, and I just saw the recent Salinger biography after I read it which I thought was terrible on the whole but still sometimes interesting. Leave him alone, we say, it's his choice, but we still obsess about him and want to talk with him.
October 20, 2012
"Well you are stupid Mum, you are one of the most stupid people I know, really what were you thinking when you decided to even read this for God's sake." Lights another cigarette. "I mean to say, for God's sake, it's full of this kind of histrionic dialogue with incessant overuse of italics, and the people in it don't so much speak as hold forth as if they were on the stage somewhere for God's sake, and they just go on and on about Jesus and chakras and anahata and all this goddam mystical stuff, well surely Mother you should have realised that you wouldn't really enjoy it all that much, I mean it's not you is it? Mysticism and religion and stuff, you never did get that did you, so why did you read it for chrissake?"
Mother also lights a cigarette. Franny has one too, and Zooey, and Bloomberg, the cat, doesn't want to feel left out so has a cigar too.
"Also, for God's sake, you could die of secondary smoke poisoning just reading this, and you know how much you hate cigarette smoke."
"But I'm - I don't know - I'm tired Zooey. I'm just exhausted, frankly."
Yup, me too, Fran, me too.
Mother also lights a cigarette. Franny has one too, and Zooey, and Bloomberg, the cat, doesn't want to feel left out so has a cigar too.
"Also, for God's sake, you could die of secondary smoke poisoning just reading this, and you know how much you hate cigarette smoke."
"But I'm - I don't know - I'm tired Zooey. I'm just exhausted, frankly."
Yup, me too, Fran, me too.
November 5, 2010
This is great; it really is. In many ways it’s the anti Cornwell-Patterson-Grisham-King-Coben-Brown. Franny and Zooey isn’t fast paced or plot driven; it isn’t thrilling (in the traditional sense), and its concepts aren’t surfaced-based or easy to come by (or even embraced by the mainstream populace), but Salinger didn’t write for these people; he wrote for himself and if you identified with what he wrote, good for you -- if not, so be it. Even so, it’s not flourishy or fancy; there’s nothing pretentious about it. There is a general disdain for snobbery running through its veins.
“You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right -- God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
Franny and Zooey would be have been prescient if it were written today. Salinger’s kooky, wacky sense of humor; his accuracy with individualized thought; his passion for non-conformity and for the individual, are all unmatched, even today. In retrospect of all we know and can (now) see of his time period, Salinger's poking and mocking of (then current) society, make Franny and Zooey seem like it was written (brilliantly) today.
Maybe it's because this book has to do with an older brother and younger sister (I’m an older brother), or maybe it's because I know how much some of my friends love this novel, but I felt rushes of something like nostalgia during my reading; some kind of sentimentality or appreciation for my friends that love this. (If you think you can’t get sentimental over a Salinger novel, you’re obviously not part of the group that loves him -- you can’t be). And while I don’t love Salinger the way some of my friends do*, I sure as fuck appreciate him, and I sure as fuck had an absolute blast reading Franny and Zooey-- my new favorite Salinger novel.
*Whether he’s one of your favorite authors or not, if you’re of the breed that can indentify with Salinger's thinking -- and can maybe even see some similarities between you and some of his characters -- you feel a love for this man.
“You raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam 'unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right -- God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
Franny and Zooey would be have been prescient if it were written today. Salinger’s kooky, wacky sense of humor; his accuracy with individualized thought; his passion for non-conformity and for the individual, are all unmatched, even today. In retrospect of all we know and can (now) see of his time period, Salinger's poking and mocking of (then current) society, make Franny and Zooey seem like it was written (brilliantly) today.
Maybe it's because this book has to do with an older brother and younger sister (I’m an older brother), or maybe it's because I know how much some of my friends love this novel, but I felt rushes of something like nostalgia during my reading; some kind of sentimentality or appreciation for my friends that love this. (If you think you can’t get sentimental over a Salinger novel, you’re obviously not part of the group that loves him -- you can’t be). And while I don’t love Salinger the way some of my friends do*, I sure as fuck appreciate him, and I sure as fuck had an absolute blast reading Franny and Zooey-- my new favorite Salinger novel.
*Whether he’s one of your favorite authors or not, if you’re of the breed that can indentify with Salinger's thinking -- and can maybe even see some similarities between you and some of his characters -- you feel a love for this man.
April 17, 2024
This is in actuality two short stories combined by the enigmatic writer to form a novel and even together not very long at that.. The opening looks rather ordinary a boy waits for his girl at a train station ( set in the 1950's) in an unnamed city in the eastern U.S., as the unpleasant cold, winter weather freezes the college student's bones. Lane Coutell is ambitious, happy, wants to make a splash in the world just the opposite of his girlfriend, Franny ( Frances) Glass of the brilliant yet troubled large family. Disillusioned by college, teachers are idiots and hypocrites, like their victim the students. Only caring about themselves and lacking passion for their jobs, going through the motions and nothing more...acting. FRANNY HAS SEEN THE LIGHT having read a book, "The Way of the Pilgrim " and its sequel, "The Pilgrim Continues his Way" by an anonymous writer a poor peasant, with a bad arm, a seeker of truth trying to find God's will from the 19th century , he wandered through massive Russia. Speaking to countless people most very friendly surprisingly, monks are glad to talk about religion to the amiable pilgrim . Franny becomes enamored (obsessed a better word) by these books, carrying them around in her purse. The much anticipated weekend crashes... like a baseball striking a glass window (pun intended). Fainting spells, arguments about teachers in their respective schools, what is really important, life in general an unpleasant atmosphere ....Second part Zooey, ( Zachary) a good- looking T.V. actor, however not a big man at 25, five years older than his little sister pretty Franny, both are at their parents apartment in New York City. He is trying to read somehow an old letter while taking a bath, mother enters...Zooey calls her Bessie and the father Les, former showbiz stars she is worried about Franny now sleeping on the couch in the living room, arriving a few days ago from the disastrous weekend, sick in heart and body...Begs him to talk to her, afraid the daughter is having a nervous breakdown, the uncomfortable son agrees. The siblings discuss her strange behavior she hates school, friends and professors quits acting in her college play everything is stupid, nothing matters but becomes a fanatical reader of the poor Pilgrim's thoughts about Jesus...Small book with big ideas ...still not loved by all in truth, heavyweight or lightweight material...you decide. I myself believe it was well worth the rather confusing trip.
July 4, 2022
I have no idea what life would be like if I were an emotionally edgy genius. Apparently the children of the Glass family, Salinger’s favorite creation, would have made a quick work out of me. You see, obviously I’m very average, the mediocrity that Franny Glass is appalled by and yet pretends - even to herself - to envy. These young people, apparently, are very much not average or mediocre.
And I can’t even pretend that I understand or “get” this book.
Is it about elitism, pseudointellectualism and dangers of it? About the crisis of intellectual and idealistic youth faced with the cynical egotistical and exquisitely materialistic world? About the fragility of sense of self and breakdown in the face of the world that is painfully not what you want - what you need - it to be? About the mote in your neighbor’s eye and the beam in yours? The innate hypocrisy even in the best of us? The dangers of religious fervor or maybe the bizarre appeal of it? The lingering scars of a strange unconventional childhood? The need to get over yourself and do your damn part for the ubiquitous Fat Lady that is all of us? Or maybe it’s all pretentiousness and self-indulgence or maybe profound musings on the existential angst and the human condition? Or is it about a deep depression that you can’t get a person out of by simply arguing the uselessness of it?
Or maybe it’s all about the strange overuse of italics? Or a piece of literature sponsored by tobacco industry - the words spoken between cigar and cigarette drags a few times per page? And is Franny pregnant or not?
Or maybe it’s a book I should have read in college to really “get” it - just like Holden’s story spoke to me when I was just entering adolescence, at the prime age for all the angst?
F*ck if I know.
All I know for certain is that those gifted angsty young geniuses obviously need to be nicer to their mother. Ungrateful brats. Get off my lawn!
Help me, oh those gifted ones who actually understand this book. Help me figure out what the hell I just read. I’ll be thankful to you forever. Because I want to like it - but I just don’t really *get* it. But obviously it touched so many people in the way that I want to understand.
A deeply confused number of stars.
——————
Recommended by: James
“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”
And I can’t even pretend that I understand or “get” this book.
“All I know is I’m losing my mind,” Franny said. “I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting—it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says.”
Is it about elitism, pseudointellectualism and dangers of it? About the crisis of intellectual and idealistic youth faced with the cynical egotistical and exquisitely materialistic world? About the fragility of sense of self and breakdown in the face of the world that is painfully not what you want - what you need - it to be? About the mote in your neighbor’s eye and the beam in yours? The innate hypocrisy even in the best of us? The dangers of religious fervor or maybe the bizarre appeal of it? The lingering scars of a strange unconventional childhood? The need to get over yourself and do your damn part for the ubiquitous Fat Lady that is all of us? Or maybe it’s all pretentiousness and self-indulgence or maybe profound musings on the existential angst and the human condition? Or is it about a deep depression that you can’t get a person out of by simply arguing the uselessness of it?
“But I’ll tell you a terrible secret—Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady.”
Or maybe it’s all about the strange overuse of italics? Or a piece of literature sponsored by tobacco industry - the words spoken between cigar and cigarette drags a few times per page? And is Franny pregnant or not?
Or maybe it’s a book I should have read in college to really “get” it - just like Holden’s story spoke to me when I was just entering adolescence, at the prime age for all the angst?
F*ck if I know.
“Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?“
All I know for certain is that those gifted angsty young geniuses obviously need to be nicer to their mother. Ungrateful brats. Get off my lawn!
Help me, oh those gifted ones who actually understand this book. Help me figure out what the hell I just read. I’ll be thankful to you forever. Because I want to like it - but I just don’t really *get* it. But obviously it touched so many people in the way that I want to understand.
“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.“
A deeply confused number of stars.
——————
Recommended by: James
June 5, 2022
Salinger offers us a pretty quest for spirituality in a very greedy world. His particular style oscillates between a sensibility on the skin and absolute brutality peculiar to his heroes.
A jewel.
A jewel.
July 13, 2013
Did you know that Zooey Glass was voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1961?
What? No, I’m kidding. Why would you have ever believed that? Did you think the magazine even existed back in ’61? Geez.
But if it did, fictional or not, Zooey could almost certainly have been a contender. And back then he would have been eligible, too. Of course, you wouldn’t get the Zooey Glass looks without a little of the Zooey Glass attitude, and are you sure you’d want to have dealt with that? It was a little...I don’t know...caustic? At least three levels above endearing sarcasm (and those are three levels in the wrong direction, by the way), Zooey could chew you up and spit you out without even blinking an eye. But yeah, I get it. He’s hot.
Franny’s not so bad looking herself, but she—like her delightful brother—may not have made the best dinner date companion. Franny, who seems to me an older, wiser, and less retarded version of Holden Caulfield (and I say this affectionately because I love Holden in all his beautiful retardedness), expresses a whole slew of disgust for the world around her, and for the state of the arts and of academia in particular. In fact, they both do (Franny and Zooey), to an extent that is both sad and comical at the same time.
So what is up with the Glass kids? Why are they so damaged? Zooey attributes their psychological issues (his and Franny’s) to their older brothers Seymour and Buddy, one of whom is dead, and the other being a stand-in for Salinger himself (or so I’ve read), as they practically forced their intellect onto their younger siblings at an impressionable age, critically injuring their ability to be happy later, and isolating them from a society that can’t comprehend their lofty criticisms of...well, nearly everything. I mean, don’t you think Franny and Zooey would have preferred to be as carefree as other members of society seem to be? Wouldn’t they wish to trade their brainiac existence, at least occasionally, for a some flip-flops and iced tea? Well, in the end, maybe not.
I liked this book very much. I loved the Glass family, as messed up as they are, along with its matriarch. I thought it interesting, too, how reading this was like reading a play. Aside from Buddy’s letter to Zooey, Franny and Zooey has a clear delineation of three distinct scenes in two distinct acts. The sets are simple, yet close attention is paid to their design. Actor positions are described at every turn. Maybe it’s just me...maybe I wanted this to be a play for some weird reason, but it’s also what appealed most to me about the book, I think. It is the dialogue between the actors (and it is almost always one-on-one) that elucidates their character and it is the characters that made me love this book as much as I did.
Oh, and Zooey Glass is hot.
What? No, I’m kidding. Why would you have ever believed that? Did you think the magazine even existed back in ’61? Geez.
But if it did, fictional or not, Zooey could almost certainly have been a contender. And back then he would have been eligible, too. Of course, you wouldn’t get the Zooey Glass looks without a little of the Zooey Glass attitude, and are you sure you’d want to have dealt with that? It was a little...I don’t know...caustic? At least three levels above endearing sarcasm (and those are three levels in the wrong direction, by the way), Zooey could chew you up and spit you out without even blinking an eye. But yeah, I get it. He’s hot.
Franny’s not so bad looking herself, but she—like her delightful brother—may not have made the best dinner date companion. Franny, who seems to me an older, wiser, and less retarded version of Holden Caulfield (and I say this affectionately because I love Holden in all his beautiful retardedness), expresses a whole slew of disgust for the world around her, and for the state of the arts and of academia in particular. In fact, they both do (Franny and Zooey), to an extent that is both sad and comical at the same time.
So what is up with the Glass kids? Why are they so damaged? Zooey attributes their psychological issues (his and Franny’s) to their older brothers Seymour and Buddy, one of whom is dead, and the other being a stand-in for Salinger himself (or so I’ve read), as they practically forced their intellect onto their younger siblings at an impressionable age, critically injuring their ability to be happy later, and isolating them from a society that can’t comprehend their lofty criticisms of...well, nearly everything. I mean, don’t you think Franny and Zooey would have preferred to be as carefree as other members of society seem to be? Wouldn’t they wish to trade their brainiac existence, at least occasionally, for a some flip-flops and iced tea? Well, in the end, maybe not.
I liked this book very much. I loved the Glass family, as messed up as they are, along with its matriarch. I thought it interesting, too, how reading this was like reading a play. Aside from Buddy’s letter to Zooey, Franny and Zooey has a clear delineation of three distinct scenes in two distinct acts. The sets are simple, yet close attention is paid to their design. Actor positions are described at every turn. Maybe it’s just me...maybe I wanted this to be a play for some weird reason, but it’s also what appealed most to me about the book, I think. It is the dialogue between the actors (and it is almost always one-on-one) that elucidates their character and it is the characters that made me love this book as much as I did.
Oh, and Zooey Glass is hot.
May 11, 2017
Most people of my generation read JD Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye back in high school, were amused by it's vulgarity and forthrightness and then forgot about it. I personally haven't reread it since. Instead, for this online Yale class on US lit since 1945, I read Franny and Zooey as it is on the syllabus. It is an interesting diptych. The shorter first part has Franny Glass meeting her boyfriend Lane at Yale and going to eat before a football game (Yale-Harvard perhaps.) The boyfriend rereads her last love letter to him and meets her at the train station. His attitude is that she is more of a trophy girlfriend. Franny, it turns out, is a basketcase. When they get to the restaurant, she lays into him for no apparent reason, cries in the bathroom, returns to drink a second martini on an empty stomach (leaving her chicken sandwich - how uncouth and uncivilized to have ordered such peasant food muses Lane), and then passes out at the bar. Curtain falls. Act 2 happens in the Glass house (an apt name for this cracked family) with her brother taking a long bath and conversing with his mother Bessy as both of them chain smoke (he in the tub hidden behind the shower curtain, his mother sitting clothes in a kimono, on the toilet. Besides the normal son-mother banter, we learn that Zachary (Zooey's real name) is 25 and one of 7 children that were all child TV stars on a game show. Both Bess and Zooey are worried in their own ways about Franny (now home resting after the Yale incident.) If this all sounds rather banal, well, it is. The real story here is about the obsession of the oldest brother, Seymour (who committed suicide some time before) with two books about that essentially talk about reaching a godlike state by saying a simple prayer to Jesus. Franny has since taken the two books out of the abandoned bedroom of the deceased brother and is in a state of nervous breakdown as she recites the lines over and over again in her head and yet is not reaching the spiritual state she thought she would. Zooey is somewhat more able to deal with the heavy atmosphere in the house (another of the siblings having been killed in WWII) by being completely pitiless and devoid of feeling and continuing a somewhat successful theatrical career. By the end of the book, he is able finally to breakthrough Franny's blockage by telling her that essentially, she is trying too hard and needs to believe in herself rather than in this repetitive prayer.
While not a masterpiece, it is an interesting story where Salinger is seemingly satirizing the Beats and their canned Buddhist-inspired pretensions to art and saying that one must engage with the world rather than run from it. He is also describing the damage that early fame does to children in undermining any moral foundation they may have had into selfishness and materialism. It is not clear however what alternative he proposes as Lane is as superficial and uncaring in his own pretentious Ivy League way that Zooey is on his artistic high horse.
The writing is interesting and fast-paced. It does make me want to go back and read A Catcher in the Rye to see if what Salinger really idealized in that book because in this one, we primarily see what he demonizes. The one really beautiful, human moment is the one I mentioned at the end.
And I believe that should you read this short book, you will find that despite the details I mention here, I fo not believe to have spoiled the story for you because most of the meaning and interest lies in the many dialogs. Let me know if you decide to read it and how you react to it.
While not a masterpiece, it is an interesting story where Salinger is seemingly satirizing the Beats and their canned Buddhist-inspired pretensions to art and saying that one must engage with the world rather than run from it. He is also describing the damage that early fame does to children in undermining any moral foundation they may have had into selfishness and materialism. It is not clear however what alternative he proposes as Lane is as superficial and uncaring in his own pretentious Ivy League way that Zooey is on his artistic high horse.
The writing is interesting and fast-paced. It does make me want to go back and read A Catcher in the Rye to see if what Salinger really idealized in that book because in this one, we primarily see what he demonizes. The one really beautiful, human moment is the one I mentioned at the end.
And I believe that should you read this short book, you will find that despite the details I mention here, I fo not believe to have spoiled the story for you because most of the meaning and interest lies in the many dialogs. Let me know if you decide to read it and how you react to it.
January 17, 2023
I was obsessed with this book back in high school. Back then, I would have given this book a rating of ten out of five. I don't know how I would rate it if I read it today. I'm giving it a three because, in retrospect, I believe Salinger's writing had a negative impact on my ability to think and write with clarity.
February 1, 2013
I'll tell you one thing, Franny. One thing I know. And don't get upset. It isn't anything bad. But if it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single goddam religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup- which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse. So you just tell me, just tell me, buddy. Even if you went out and searched the whole world for a master- some guru, some boly man- to tell you how to say your Jesus Prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose? Can you tell me that?
What Zooey says to Franny in the last part of Franny and Zooey is maybe the most wonderful thing I have read. I have been slowly rerereading F&Z all day, wanting to get to what Zooey says to Franny. Afraid, a little, to get there if I didn't have Franny's joyful smile at the ceiling. You know when someone is right and if you cannot accept that light maybe it is going to be dark forever.
But I'll tell you a terrible secret- Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know- listen to me, now- don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy.
I could read what Zooey says forever if I had to. It's hard to remember it sometimes when you get lost. My friend Kristen had to tell me something about this kind of grief once. When you know, can understand suicide and it doesn't change the gut. The loss. It's not about understanding it, or having the words. It's love, taking it away. It's not reasoned and you can know it and mourn it at the same time. She said something better than the way I'm putting it. It was a long time ago but I need to remember it now. I've been obsessed for months now with something David Grossman said about how writing is the only place where the thing and the loss of it can co-exist. I don't know how to do it, yet, at least not all the way. I have this idea that if I could figure out how to have the thing and the loss of it that things would be okay. Understanding in my head is not hard for me. I have been that person too. My cousin may die. It is her fourth attempt in two years. If you know about what Kate Gompert says in Infinite Jest then you'll know why I found it so chilling. My cousin said words so much the same, those words that aren't mine so I can't say them, and needed the electric shock treatment. It was her hope. She looked forward to it and lived with me so she could get it here. I could not want her to live like that. It doesn't stop me from feeling this pain. I am so scared. I watched her for months in 2011/2012 on my couch in a deadened existence. She slept all of the time and I hardly slept at all. I know about the no words can help thing. I didn't try to say anything and I wasn't going to leave. She did tell my grandmother that I didn't treat her as if she was crazy helped. There was no chance I was ever going to treat her like she was crazy. That was all I could do and I don't blame myself. I'm not close with her. I haven't heard a word from her in almost a year. And I turned to J.D. Salinger. (I could feel like Zooey with his reading material too. I felt inside so much that I wanted to be Zooey and not me. He knows what to do.) I can't stop thinking about the Glass family. Something about them that I have loved for so much of my life is how their past and present lives seem to go on at the same time. Like it could be Grossman's the thing and the loss of it co-existing. Seymour killed himself and he knew about the fat lady. I came to terms with this a long time ago (if I'm going to continue to survive my family and suicide I don't know what else to do but learn how to do this). When it happens and every other time are not the same time. I know it from myself and I know it from others. I also know that it doesn't do anything to take away the permanent falling in my stomach. Just missing and love and I don't feel selfish because I don't feel any kind of asking in my heart. It's not for me. I can't think past fear.
So the way that their family lives on at the same time. I'm going to try it right now. This is something I had with my cousin (and her little brother. She is eight years younger than me and he ten my junior). When they were kids I babysat them. Most of the time these afternoons turned all night because certain people never came back when they said they were going to (totally illegal, by the way). I made up all kinds of stories for them. My twin did too. We'd invent together sometimes. It was the best feeling, really, to do that. But what I loved and want to remember now is that for years afterwards, even when they were adults, they'd bring up these stories any time they saw me. They'd ask to hear them again. I wouldn't remember anything about it, either. "Remember the one when..." Best. feeling. ever. Some times things are so damned hard I don't know what I'm going to do but I can remember that still. I don't want to repeat the stories here because I couldn't ever think they were good. But it meant a lot to me that they thought they did. It's something to be remembered like that even though I come from a family that never asks or tells anything. You can find out that she was in an abusive relationship and not doing well and last you heard she was with some great guy and all was good. I know in my head there's no such thing as right words. I know in my gut that one time those kids had the right words for me. It can happen. And yeah, the Seymour's fat lady. I know everyone who loves Franny & Zooey loves that. Franny falls apart and says the Lord's prayer. If you say whomever your lords name is over and over something is bound to happen. You are bound to be heard sooner or later if you just keep saying it. Something will happen. A miracle? What if you just remember them and then the name is the miracle. You can feel divorced from the world and not trust that anyone else is Seymour's Fat Lady. I really love Salinger. I got the same feeling when I reread Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenter & Seymour that the world was people who could be your family. And if everyone is Jesus that is something. I don't want to start thinking that there's right words you could say to fix it. But when Zooey does it... It happened. I don't care if I'm in the land of oversharing for some people, either. Because I truly believe that people are Seymour's Fat Lady. Sure, words aren't going to fix it and knowing and the heart aren't going to fix each other. So, have them at the same time. Next time I could be Franny again and there's the chance again to listen to Zooey. Just an amazing book.
P.s. I changed my rating to a five from a four because you love what you love when it isn't perfect. I felt suffocated by Bessie and I wasn't in love until Zooey talks but I NEEDED it. Right words, right?
May 19, 2019
وقتی به یک نفر کتابهای سلینجر را معرفی می کنم و خوشش نیاید ناراحت می شوم. شاید فکر کنید شوخی ست اما کاملا جدی می گویم. نمی فهمم چرا از سلینجر خوششان نیامده نویسنده ای که به نظرم نابغه بود و به نظر خیلی های دیگر. من با کتاب های او زندگی کرده بودم و فکر می کردم هر کسی هم مثل من با خواندن یکی از کتاب هایش فقط یکی از آنها شیفته اش می شود. معمولا وقتی بخواهم معرفی اش بکنم می گویم. فقط تا سی سالگی نوشت و تا نود سالگی زندگی کرد.نابغه بود. قاتل جان لنون به هنگام شلیک گلوله یک نسخه از ناطور دشت در دست داشت. و می گویم بهترین کتابش ناطور دشت نیست با اینکه اسمش در لیست "صد رمانی که قبل از مرگ باید بخوانیم" هست، به نظر من فرنی و زویی و خلق خانواده ی گلس شاهکارش است. اینها را می گویم. درظاهر به نظر عجیب و غریب می رسد و نه خیلی جذاب. نمی دانم چرا نمی توانم خاطرات خودم از کتاب های سلینجر را برایشان تعریف کنم. خب اینها یک سری خاطرات شخصی ست و چرا باید برای آنها جذابیت داشته باشد. مثلا نمی گویم من نصف بیشتر کارهای زندگی ام را به خاطر خانم چاقه انجام داده ام. هروقت دیدم که نمی توانم بلند شوم و سخت است روز جدید را با این همه ملال و تکرار شروع کرد در دل گفتم " به خاطر خانم چاقه" همان طور که سیمور می خواست. وقتی مادر از برادر می پرسید چرا ازدواج نمی کنی می گفت" چون دوست دارم وقتی سوار قطار میشم کنار پنجره بشینم". همان جمله ای که زویی به خانم گلس می گفت. وقتی بهم میگفتن چرا اینقدر آدم سرد و بی احساسی هستی می گفتم :" من؟ کافیه یه غروب صورتی بهم نشون بدید که جلوتون غش کنم." همان حرفی که زویی در جواب خانم گلس گفته بود. مادر بدون اینکه کتاب را خوانده باشد گاهی اوقات که نگاهمان می کرد میگفت " فایده این همه کتاب خواندن چیه وقتی آدم نمی تونه خوشحال باشه؟" همان جمله ی خانم گلس در نگاه آخری که به زویی انداخت.
یک شب، درست یادم است زمستان سال هشتاد و پنج بود و من داشتم فیلم های برنده ی اسکار را می دیدم، فیلم هزارتوی پن و دندان درد داشتم فیلم جذاب بود ولی عجیب لابه لای آن داشتم به داستان "دختری که می شناختم" از سلینجر فکر می کردم و دندان درد را تحمل می کردم. ماجرای دختر یهودی بود که در جنگ جهانی دوم در کوره آدم سوزی سوخته بود. و سربازی که التماس می کرد برود آن بالکن خالی را ببیند، جایی که خودش و دختر سالها قبل می نشستند و جور قشنگی با هم آشنا شده بودند. به واسطه ی یک آهنگ عاشقانه که در خانه ی او پخش می شد و خیلی اتفاقی چند روز بعد صدای دختر را شنیده بود که می خواندش.
با فکر کردن به آن درد دندان رفع شده بود.
روی در و دیوار اتاق سیمور و بادی پر از جملاتی از بزرگان بود. زمان دانشجویی برای چندماه دیوار اتاق خانه ای که اجاره کرده بودیم را با کاغذهای بزرگ پوشاندم و هر جمله ی زیبایی که به گوشم می رسید روی آن می نوشتم. و حتی گاهی خاطرات یک خطی را با ذکر تاریخ می نوشتم.
سالها قبل که به استخر می رفتم و به سختی شنا می کردم وقتی همه خودشان را راحت روی آب نگه می داشتند در فضای استخر هروقت از گروه فاصله می گرفتم و خودم را روی سطح آب رها می کردم به خانم چاقه فکر می کردم و فرو می رفتم و حرکات کند دست و پا زدن های شناگران را نگاه می کردم. سرعت جهان و همه ی موجودات در درون آب کم می شد و میان درخشش آبی اش یاد جمله ی دوکوساد می افتادم که بر دیوار اتاق بادی و سیمور نوشته شده بود" خداوند دل را نه با افکار و عقاید بلکه با درد و تناقض آگاه می سازد."خفه می شدم و روی سطح آب می آمدم و نفس عمیق می کشیدم.
هروقت بخواهم کتابی به کسی هدیه بدهم که از ناامیدی حرف می زند همیشه اولین گزینه ام "فرنی و زویی" ست. به خاطر جمله ی محشر زویی آنجایی که پرده ها را می کشد و آفتاب کل اتاق را روشن می کند و می گوید" بیا بریم بیرون رفیق، بیا بهترین وقت روز رو اینجا تلف نکنیم."
یک شب، درست یادم است زمستان سال هشتاد و پنج بود و من داشتم فیلم های برنده ی اسکار را می دیدم، فیلم هزارتوی پن و دندان درد داشتم فیلم جذاب بود ولی عجیب لابه لای آن داشتم به داستان "دختری که می شناختم" از سلینجر فکر می کردم و دندان درد را تحمل می کردم. ماجرای دختر یهودی بود که در جنگ جهانی دوم در کوره آدم سوزی سوخته بود. و سربازی که التماس می کرد برود آن بالکن خالی را ببیند، جایی که خودش و دختر سالها قبل می نشستند و جور قشنگی با هم آشنا شده بودند. به واسطه ی یک آهنگ عاشقانه که در خانه ی او پخش می شد و خیلی اتفاقی چند روز بعد صدای دختر را شنیده بود که می خواندش.
با فکر کردن به آن درد دندان رفع شده بود.
روی در و دیوار اتاق سیمور و بادی پر از جملاتی از بزرگان بود. زمان دانشجویی برای چندماه دیوار اتاق خانه ای که اجاره کرده بودیم را با کاغذهای بزرگ پوشاندم و هر جمله ی زیبایی که به گوشم می رسید روی آن می نوشتم. و حتی گاهی خاطرات یک خطی را با ذکر تاریخ می نوشتم.
سالها قبل که به استخر می رفتم و به سختی شنا می کردم وقتی همه خودشان را راحت روی آب نگه می داشتند در فضای استخر هروقت از گروه فاصله می گرفتم و خودم را روی سطح آب رها می کردم به خانم چاقه فکر می کردم و فرو می رفتم و حرکات کند دست و پا زدن های شناگران را نگاه می کردم. سرعت جهان و همه ی موجودات در درون آب کم می شد و میان درخشش آبی اش یاد جمله ی دوکوساد می افتادم که بر دیوار اتاق بادی و سیمور نوشته شده بود" خداوند دل را نه با افکار و عقاید بلکه با درد و تناقض آگاه می سازد."خفه می شدم و روی سطح آب می آمدم و نفس عمیق می کشیدم.
هروقت بخواهم کتابی به کسی هدیه بدهم که از ناامیدی حرف می زند همیشه اولین گزینه ام "فرنی و زویی" ست. به خاطر جمله ی محشر زویی آنجایی که پرده ها را می کشد و آفتاب کل اتاق را روشن می کند و می گوید" بیا بریم بیرون رفیق، بیا بهترین وقت روز رو اینجا تلف نکنیم."
December 23, 2018
Sorry Salinger fans but I really did not enjoy this one.
I guess Salinger intended this book to be like a Platonic dialogue, full of profound wisdom. But instead of Franny being hectored by Zooey, reading this felt like I was being hectored by the author. The whole story is contrived, the characters are irritating & supercilious, Zooey’s ‘advice’ is condescending and actually, just terrible advice. Which would be fine if that was the point, but it felt like Salinger wants us to love Zooey, think his religiosity deep and to believe that he ‘fixed’ Franny by the end.
The first section, with Franny and Lane in the restaurant, was decent. It felt like a scene out of Mad Men, very arch. Lane was clearly supposed to be awful, and I just assumed Franny was too. So it kind of works when the characters’ awfulness is intentional. But the writing style is also irritating and in general this book was like nails on a blackboard to me.
I guess Salinger intended this book to be like a Platonic dialogue, full of profound wisdom. But instead of Franny being hectored by Zooey, reading this felt like I was being hectored by the author. The whole story is contrived, the characters are irritating & supercilious, Zooey’s ‘advice’ is condescending and actually, just terrible advice. Which would be fine if that was the point, but it felt like Salinger wants us to love Zooey, think his religiosity deep and to believe that he ‘fixed’ Franny by the end.
The first section, with Franny and Lane in the restaurant, was decent. It felt like a scene out of Mad Men, very arch. Lane was clearly supposed to be awful, and I just assumed Franny was too. So it kind of works when the characters’ awfulness is intentional. But the writing style is also irritating and in general this book was like nails on a blackboard to me.
May 11, 2017
خدایا.. واقعاً بهچنین چیزی نیاز داشتم.. چن وخته بهاینچیزا فک میکنم؟ چن وخته دغدغههام رنگ و بوی اینکتابو گرفته؟ ایناوّلین داستانی بود که از سلینجر خوندم و باید بگم خیلی، خیلی، خیلی ازش خوشم اومد. اگه همهی کتاباش همینطوریـن، محشره. با داستاناش آدمو درمان میکنه.
نکتهی حیرتانگیز داستان، اینهکه نود درصدش دیالوگه و من شخصاً اصلاً خسته نشدم با دیالوگا. اونقد طبیعی و واقعی بودن و خب روح ِ منم بهشون نیاز داش.. و چقد نویسنده صادق و روراس نوشتهشون.. شخصیّتپردازی ِ بینظیر تکتک ِ شخصیّتها ستودنیه. فرنی رو با تمام وجود، درک میکردم. در عین اینکه سرزنشش میکردم. روح سیمور در بند بند داستان مث یهقدیس حضور داش و زویی، زویی.. چقد اینشخصیّت نازنین، نابغه، سادیسمی، دلسوز، مهربون، دیوونه و اعصابخرد کن بود. ازوندس آدمایی که از فرط ِ هوش و نبوغ، روانی شدن! :دی شخصیّتی که هم خعلی دوسش دارم و هم مث فرنی، دلم میخواد بکشمش. :دی
و خب، با همهی اینتعریفا، اصلاً داستانی نیس که هر کسی بخونه و بفهمه. نه اینکه خدایی نکرده بخوام شعور کسی رو بیارم پایین، مسئله اینهکه چقد میتونی درون داستان فرو بری. چقد لمسش میکنی و تجربههاشو مزّهمزّه کنی. هوش، درک، احساس، هر اسمی که میشه روش گذاش. بههر حال، مخاطبش خاصّه. و مسئلهی بزرگشم همونبحرانهای معرفتی- عقیدتی ِ بنیادی غرب هس که بهعرفانهای شرقی پناه میآرن و ازین بحثهای جامعهشناسانهای که شخصاً شیفتهشونم. احتمالاً واسه همینه که کتاب علوماجتماعی چارممونو نیگه داشتم.
+ فقط چرا اینقد سیگار میکشیدن؟ ینی سیگاره تموم نشده، یکی دیگه روشن میکردن! ازون مامانشون بگیر تا زویی و فرنی با اونهمه ناز و اداش. :دی
+ ویرایش پس از خوانش دوم: نه، تأثیر بار اولم رو نداشت. به نظرم خیلی از دیالوگها زائد و رواعصاب اومدن. زویی خیلی حرف میزد. حوصله آدم
سر میرفت. :/ ولی از زمانی که میره پیش فرنی و حرف میزنه باهاش، با اینکه مدام میخواد خودشو کنار بکشه ولی نمیتونه در مقابل خواهرش بیتفاوت بمونه، باز داستان به خوبی بخش اول میشه. وگرنه بخش اول به نظرم شاهکاره. ولی بخشی که زویی با مامانش تو حمومه، به شدت ور ور میکنن- شرمنده :دی- و دیالوگها با این حجم، راهگشا نیستن. باز از جایی که میره پیش فرنی بهتر میشه. گرچه بازم حشو زیاد داره. ولی پای تلفن بخصوص، هم نقشی که بازی کرد هم خیلی حرفاش دوستداشتنی بودن. فقط بیچاره لین، معلوم نشد اون آخرش چی شد. و اینکه فرنی آیا برگشت به دانشگاه؟ یا طرح این سوألات اصن مهم نیستن؟ ینی تو تقریباً دوصفحه، یهو فرنی زیر و رو میشه؟ آخه به نظرم حرفای آخرِ زویی خیلی هم تأثیرگذار نبودن. ن�� حداقل اونقدی که از یه شخصیت با چنین هوشی انتظار میره و من خیلی حس نکردم فرنی بحرانش حل شده باشه. وقتی کسی اونقد تو ذکر گفتن و خوددرماندگیش غرق شده باشه، حرفای آخر زویی نمیتونه اینطور تغییرش بده.
نکتهی حیرتانگیز داستان، اینهکه نود درصدش دیالوگه و من شخصاً اصلاً خسته نشدم با دیالوگا. اونقد طبیعی و واقعی بودن و خب روح ِ منم بهشون نیاز داش.. و چقد نویسنده صادق و روراس نوشتهشون.. شخصیّتپردازی ِ بینظیر تکتک ِ شخصیّتها ستودنیه. فرنی رو با تمام وجود، درک میکردم. در عین اینکه سرزنشش میکردم. روح سیمور در بند بند داستان مث یهقدیس حضور داش و زویی، زویی.. چقد اینشخصیّت نازنین، نابغه، سادیسمی، دلسوز، مهربون، دیوونه و اعصابخرد کن بود. ازوندس آدمایی که از فرط ِ هوش و نبوغ، روانی شدن! :دی شخصیّتی که هم خعلی دوسش دارم و هم مث فرنی، دلم میخواد بکشمش. :دی
و خب، با همهی اینتعریفا، اصلاً داستانی نیس که هر کسی بخونه و بفهمه. نه اینکه خدایی نکرده بخوام شعور کسی رو بیارم پایین، مسئله اینهکه چقد میتونی درون داستان فرو بری. چقد لمسش میکنی و تجربههاشو مزّهمزّه کنی. هوش، درک، احساس، هر اسمی که میشه روش گذاش. بههر حال، مخاطبش خاصّه. و مسئلهی بزرگشم همونبحرانهای معرفتی- عقیدتی ِ بنیادی غرب هس که بهعرفانهای شرقی پناه میآرن و ازین بحثهای جامعهشناسانهای که شخصاً شیفتهشونم. احتمالاً واسه همینه که کتاب علوماجتماعی چارممونو نیگه داشتم.
+ فقط چرا اینقد سیگار میکشیدن؟ ینی سیگاره تموم نشده، یکی دیگه روشن میکردن! ازون مامانشون بگیر تا زویی و فرنی با اونهمه ناز و اداش. :دی
+ ویرایش پس از خوانش دوم: نه، تأثیر بار اولم رو نداشت. به نظرم خیلی از دیالوگها زائد و رواعصاب اومدن. زویی خیلی حرف میزد. حوصله آدم
سر میرفت. :/ ولی از زمانی که میره پیش فرنی و حرف میزنه باهاش، با اینکه مدام میخواد خودشو کنار بکشه ولی نمیتونه در مقابل خواهرش بیتفاوت بمونه، باز داستان به خوبی بخش اول میشه. وگرنه بخش اول به نظرم شاهکاره. ولی بخشی که زویی با مامانش تو حمومه، به شدت ور ور میکنن- شرمنده :دی- و دیالوگها با این حجم، راهگشا نیستن. باز از جایی که میره پیش فرنی بهتر میشه. گرچه بازم حشو زیاد داره. ولی پای تلفن بخصوص، هم نقشی که بازی کرد هم خیلی حرفاش دوستداشتنی بودن. فقط بیچاره لین، معلوم نشد اون آخرش چی شد. و اینکه فرنی آیا برگشت به دانشگاه؟ یا طرح این سوألات اصن مهم نیستن؟ ینی تو تقریباً دوصفحه، یهو فرنی زیر و رو میشه؟ آخه به نظرم حرفای آخرِ زویی خیلی هم تأثیرگذار نبودن. ن�� حداقل اونقدی که از یه شخصیت با چنین هوشی انتظار میره و من خیلی حس نکردم فرنی بحرانش حل شده باشه. وقتی کسی اونقد تو ذکر گفتن و خوددرماندگیش غرق شده باشه، حرفای آخر زویی نمیتونه اینطور تغییرش بده.
June 22, 2018
Lane was speaking now as someone does who has been monopolizing conversation for a good quarter of an hour or so and who believes he has just hit a stride where his voice can do absolutely no wrong.
Oh-kay. Let's break this down.
Salinger is a brilliant writer. And the first part of this two-part book is absolute perfection.
The section called "Franny" is amazing. It's about 20 percent of the book. It's a wonderful and to-the-point story about a college "girl" who becomes increasingly fed up with the phoniness and pretentiousness of everyone all around her. This is brilliantly and briefly illustrated as the story centers around her date and reunion with the boyfriend she once loved - but now finds insufferable (with good reason, IMO).
Even though Salinger shows us the young man's point of view also, it's hard for us to sympathize with him as we see him through Franny's eyes (and even his own thoughts don't always put him in the kindest light).
This is amazing. As Franny is getting increasingly and increasingly exasperated with her pompous windbag of a boyfriend, so are we. As she gets more and more ill to her stomach listening to his garbage, so do we. When she goes to the bathroom and sighs in relief at the blessed silence, we do as well.
No one is better than Salinger at painting self-important snobs - and painting the self-important snobs who take it upon themselves to sneer at the first group. Franny may be at the end of her rope with her boyfriend's endless pontificating on The Truth and his seemingly endless love for hearing his own voice - but we (or at least this reader) sees that Franny is suffering from a case of "I see the truth that no one else does, why am I so blessed/cursed" as well.
The whole story is wonderful. Lane's (Franny's boyfriend) pomposity, Franny's sudden violent reaction to his self-importance, the tension and awkwardness that comes with seeing your long-distance lover in person again after months of absence.
This story gets five stars, A+.
...
However, then we get to Part Two: Zooey, in which Franny and her brother Zooey interact at home. And this is where I feel like Salinger loses the thread.
What? Loses the thread?!? How dare you! I'll have you know that Salinger was the greatest writer of all time! His craft -
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I'm not arguing with his wordcraft. He's obviously a skilled writer with a unique and tangible worldview and a keen ear for dialogue.
But this whole story (the "Zooey" part of the book) is just TOO MUCH. OMGosh, I thought I was going to fall over and die from all this religious, philosophical, and intelligentsia nonsense.
What worked, and what was good in this second story was the family dynamics and the familial love shown here. It's subtle, it's real, it's effective.
However, as I said earlier, Salinger really loses the thread and also bogs down this story in a lot of muck. I don't need four solid pages on the true meaning of Christ. I really don't. And this isn't a RELIGIOUS thing, it's an INTELLIGENTSIA thing.
Two authors (that I know of, so far in my life) really write novels that are by and for what my friend would call "the intellectual class." The class of people who are not very wealthy - although not impoverished - who are in continual pursuit of knowledge and are eternal students. These people take jobs like professor, poet, philosopher, and author. My friend who is a professor talks about this class of people often. She's quite funny but also quite academic to-the-T in a way that I think Salinger skewers perfectly.
Two authors who really get into the essence of this 'intellectual class' are J.D. Salinger and David Lodge. However, I find Salinger much harder to take than Lodge. Both are very smart, both are funny - but while David Lodge is approachable and good-natured, Salinger is prickly and bitter. Both are funny, but Lodge is funny like that older, chubby cousin you have who is so smart but so kind and Salinger is like that bitter, whip-smart, bone-thin uncle who smokes incessantly and quotes The Bridge Over the River Kwai all the time.
Wait, what?
Lodge = smart and cuddly. Salinger = smart and prickly.
Oh. Okay, thanks.
Both break down and mock the problems that 'big thinkers' have. Both are funny and effective. But Salinger is like espresso and Lodge is like Irish Breakfast Tea with cream and sugar.
Can we stop comparing the authors to weirdo things? I'm getting lost.
Okay.
I would only give this Zooey story 3 stars. Really, it probably deserves 4, but it's so bloated and it's more than a bit pretentious. I have a hard time dealing with it, even though Salinger uses some magnificent writing in it.
...
Tl;dr - I'd recommend everyone read "Franny." It's short - and you can say you've read Salinger. It will get across to you the real idea of Salinger and what he's like. However, you can take or leave "Zooey." I know some people are crazy about this book, I ended up not being one of them - BUT, let me be clear that Salinger's skill as an author is not in question here. His skill is glaring off every page. He also manages to capture a certain time period in a way that I think is rare and special (this book was published in 1961 with the stories published in 1955 and 1957, respectively, courtesy of The New Yorker).
If you want to get a The Catcher in the Rye feeling but don't want to read a full-length novel, "Franny" will hit the spot. You can read "Zooey" if you are a big Salinger fan, or just curious, or you can stop after "Franny" and be perfectly happy (IMO).
This book has special significance to me, I own the first edition hardback that belonged to my mother. As it was my mother's book, it has a special place in my heart, even though "Zooey" is not really doing it for me. I own her copy of The Catcher in the Rye, too, which was read much more frequently than this book.
I should pick up Nine Stories. We never had that book in the house growing up and I'm still unfamiliar with its contents. A certain friend of mine is a huge Salinger fan and is chomping at the bit for his unpublished stories to finally get released. I can't say I'm at that level of fandom, but I like Salinger enough to pick up Nine Stories and give it a whirl.
P.S. Thanks to Kelly for bringing this up: I want to say, if you hated The Catcher in the Rye you are most likely NOT going to enjoy this.
Oh-kay. Let's break this down.
Salinger is a brilliant writer. And the first part of this two-part book is absolute perfection.
The section called "Franny" is amazing. It's about 20 percent of the book. It's a wonderful and to-the-point story about a college "girl" who becomes increasingly fed up with the phoniness and pretentiousness of everyone all around her. This is brilliantly and briefly illustrated as the story centers around her date and reunion with the boyfriend she once loved - but now finds insufferable (with good reason, IMO).
Even though Salinger shows us the young man's point of view also, it's hard for us to sympathize with him as we see him through Franny's eyes (and even his own thoughts don't always put him in the kindest light).
This is amazing. As Franny is getting increasingly and increasingly exasperated with her pompous windbag of a boyfriend, so are we. As she gets more and more ill to her stomach listening to his garbage, so do we. When she goes to the bathroom and sighs in relief at the blessed silence, we do as well.
No one is better than Salinger at painting self-important snobs - and painting the self-important snobs who take it upon themselves to sneer at the first group. Franny may be at the end of her rope with her boyfriend's endless pontificating on The Truth and his seemingly endless love for hearing his own voice - but we (or at least this reader) sees that Franny is suffering from a case of "I see the truth that no one else does, why am I so blessed/cursed" as well.
The whole story is wonderful. Lane's (Franny's boyfriend) pomposity, Franny's sudden violent reaction to his self-importance, the tension and awkwardness that comes with seeing your long-distance lover in person again after months of absence.
This story gets five stars, A+.
...
However, then we get to Part Two: Zooey, in which Franny and her brother Zooey interact at home. And this is where I feel like Salinger loses the thread.
What? Loses the thread?!? How dare you! I'll have you know that Salinger was the greatest writer of all time! His craft -
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, I'm not arguing with his wordcraft. He's obviously a skilled writer with a unique and tangible worldview and a keen ear for dialogue.
But this whole story (the "Zooey" part of the book) is just TOO MUCH. OMGosh, I thought I was going to fall over and die from all this religious, philosophical, and intelligentsia nonsense.
What worked, and what was good in this second story was the family dynamics and the familial love shown here. It's subtle, it's real, it's effective.
However, as I said earlier, Salinger really loses the thread and also bogs down this story in a lot of muck. I don't need four solid pages on the true meaning of Christ. I really don't. And this isn't a RELIGIOUS thing, it's an INTELLIGENTSIA thing.
Two authors (that I know of, so far in my life) really write novels that are by and for what my friend would call "the intellectual class." The class of people who are not very wealthy - although not impoverished - who are in continual pursuit of knowledge and are eternal students. These people take jobs like professor, poet, philosopher, and author. My friend who is a professor talks about this class of people often. She's quite funny but also quite academic to-the-T in a way that I think Salinger skewers perfectly.
Two authors who really get into the essence of this 'intellectual class' are J.D. Salinger and David Lodge. However, I find Salinger much harder to take than Lodge. Both are very smart, both are funny - but while David Lodge is approachable and good-natured, Salinger is prickly and bitter. Both are funny, but Lodge is funny like that older, chubby cousin you have who is so smart but so kind and Salinger is like that bitter, whip-smart, bone-thin uncle who smokes incessantly and quotes The Bridge Over the River Kwai all the time.
Wait, what?
Lodge = smart and cuddly. Salinger = smart and prickly.
Oh. Okay, thanks.
Both break down and mock the problems that 'big thinkers' have. Both are funny and effective. But Salinger is like espresso and Lodge is like Irish Breakfast Tea with cream and sugar.
Can we stop comparing the authors to weirdo things? I'm getting lost.
Okay.
I would only give this Zooey story 3 stars. Really, it probably deserves 4, but it's so bloated and it's more than a bit pretentious. I have a hard time dealing with it, even though Salinger uses some magnificent writing in it.
...
Tl;dr - I'd recommend everyone read "Franny." It's short - and you can say you've read Salinger. It will get across to you the real idea of Salinger and what he's like. However, you can take or leave "Zooey." I know some people are crazy about this book, I ended up not being one of them - BUT, let me be clear that Salinger's skill as an author is not in question here. His skill is glaring off every page. He also manages to capture a certain time period in a way that I think is rare and special (this book was published in 1961 with the stories published in 1955 and 1957, respectively, courtesy of The New Yorker).
If you want to get a The Catcher in the Rye feeling but don't want to read a full-length novel, "Franny" will hit the spot. You can read "Zooey" if you are a big Salinger fan, or just curious, or you can stop after "Franny" and be perfectly happy (IMO).
This book has special significance to me, I own the first edition hardback that belonged to my mother. As it was my mother's book, it has a special place in my heart, even though "Zooey" is not really doing it for me. I own her copy of The Catcher in the Rye, too, which was read much more frequently than this book.
I should pick up Nine Stories. We never had that book in the house growing up and I'm still unfamiliar with its contents. A certain friend of mine is a huge Salinger fan and is chomping at the bit for his unpublished stories to finally get released. I can't say I'm at that level of fandom, but I like Salinger enough to pick up Nine Stories and give it a whirl.
P.S. Thanks to Kelly for bringing this up: I want to say, if you hated The Catcher in the Rye you are most likely NOT going to enjoy this.
December 8, 2010
I swore to myself that I would write a review of this book before the end of 2010, so here goes. I should issue a warning - I'm totally stoked up on hot Jameson toddies due to this nasty cold that took over my body on Monday (recipe: ample whiskey, cloves, lemons and suagar, all of which you mash together - and this is important - BEFORE you add the hot water; then guzzle as the situation demands). But then, it was unlikely that I would ever be able to review this - one of my top 3 books of all time - stone cold sober. And for those who wonder what kind of difference there might be between reviews on goodreads and those posted on other sites, rest assured - this is the kind of review I am self-aware enough never to post anywhere else. But self-indulgent enough, and trusting enough, to risk here on goodreads.
I think the main reason I love this book so much is that, no matter how many times I read it, every time I do it feels as if Salinger is speaking directly to me. When I first came across it (from reading "Catcher in the Rye", of course) it felt as if I had been stumbling through this enormous library all my life when suddenly I came across this secret text that had been written just for me, and only for me. Now, I'm not an idiot, so of course one part of me knows that this isn't so - there are no "magic texts", nobody is out there writing just for me. But though, on the surface I am this consummate rationalist (I have a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics, for Chrissakes), thank God I am at some level smart enough to appreciate the magic in finding a text that seems to speak to me so forcefully.
"I'm not an idiot". No. In fact I'm super-smart (not arrogance, just a statement of fact). And often, before reading this book, this felt like more of a curse than a blessing. But it was Salinger's story of the hyper-smart Glass children that first offered me a viable way to come to terms with my own gifts. At one level, there's the advice that her siblings attempt to pass on to Franny, who has reached a kind of spiritual crisis triggered by a realisation of her own giftedness. There's the love, concern and humanity with which they try to help her through that crisis, to help her to make the realisation that her talent doesn't have to be something that separates her from the great majority of people. That there is a sacred responsibility to develop and follow one's talents.
And any hint of elitism, or intellectual snobbery, or some of the other charges that are sometimes thrown against Salinger are rendered so obviously meaningless and beyond the point in the last few pages of this extraordinary love story:
Zooey: "I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damned well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again ..."
Franny was standing. "He told me too", she said into the phone. "He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once"
Zooey: "I don't care where an actor acts. ... But I'll tell you a terrible secret... There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. ..... There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. ... I can't talk any more, buddy."
And I can't write any more right now.
I think the main reason I love this book so much is that, no matter how many times I read it, every time I do it feels as if Salinger is speaking directly to me. When I first came across it (from reading "Catcher in the Rye", of course) it felt as if I had been stumbling through this enormous library all my life when suddenly I came across this secret text that had been written just for me, and only for me. Now, I'm not an idiot, so of course one part of me knows that this isn't so - there are no "magic texts", nobody is out there writing just for me. But though, on the surface I am this consummate rationalist (I have a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics, for Chrissakes), thank God I am at some level smart enough to appreciate the magic in finding a text that seems to speak to me so forcefully.
"I'm not an idiot". No. In fact I'm super-smart (not arrogance, just a statement of fact). And often, before reading this book, this felt like more of a curse than a blessing. But it was Salinger's story of the hyper-smart Glass children that first offered me a viable way to come to terms with my own gifts. At one level, there's the advice that her siblings attempt to pass on to Franny, who has reached a kind of spiritual crisis triggered by a realisation of her own giftedness. There's the love, concern and humanity with which they try to help her through that crisis, to help her to make the realisation that her talent doesn't have to be something that separates her from the great majority of people. That there is a sacred responsibility to develop and follow one's talents.
And any hint of elitism, or intellectual snobbery, or some of the other charges that are sometimes thrown against Salinger are rendered so obviously meaningless and beyond the point in the last few pages of this extraordinary love story:
Zooey: "I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damned well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again ..."
Franny was standing. "He told me too", she said into the phone. "He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once"
Zooey: "I don't care where an actor acts. ... But I'll tell you a terrible secret... There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. ..... There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. ... I can't talk any more, buddy."
And I can't write any more right now.
June 21, 2019
اولین بار که این کتاب را خواندم بیست ساله بودم. سر یکی از این کلاس های مربوط به مزخرفات مذهبی. از همان موقع ترجیح میدادم اگر قرار به هدر دادن وقت باشد, جور بهتری هدر برود. پس سراغ یک کتاب جو زده رفتم. و از آنجایی که من و همه دوستان و همکلاسی هایم جو زده بودیم خیلی هم خوشم آمد. حال و هوای آن روزهای من, حال و هوای فرانیِ بیست ساله بود. دلزده از آدمهای نامحترم و خودبین و بادکرده از ارزشهای بی ارزش. جو زدگی طبیعی بود.
مدتی پیش در راستای پاکسازی قفسه های کتابم, خودم را از شر ترجمه اش خلاص کردم. غافل از اینکه نسخه اصلی این کتاب یک جایی بین وسایلم جا خوش کرده. وقتی هفته پیش بین ریویوها چند خط اثرگذاری خواندم تصمیم به دوباره خوانی گرفتم.
فرانی بیست ساله این بار نه به من نزدیک بود و نه قابل درک. دخترکی بود بی تجربه و جو زده که فکر میکرد به جواب رسیده.
اینبار شخصیت زویی برایم قابل تحمل تر و قابل درک تر بود. کسی که تجربه چیزها را از سر گذرانده و بیهودگی شان را دیده و رهایشان کرده.
هرچند پختگی لازم را نداشت.
امروز بادی را بیشتر میفهمم و خودم را به سیمور نزدیکتر حس میکنم.
در مورد کلیت کتاب اما نظرم نسبت به ده سال قبل افت کرده.
به جز چند جمله قشنگ, چیز جدید و جذاب دیگری برای من نداشت و خیلی جاها تکنیک تندخوانی و اسکن و اسکیم را رویش تمرین کردم هاهاها.
تنها چیزی که در این ده سال در نظرم تغییر نکرده همان تک جمله طلایی فرانی است; جمله ای که جدید نیست و شاهکار سلینجر هم نیست. جمله ای که من و شما هم ته فکرمان و ته دلمان ممکن است هر روز بهش بربخوریم اما روی کاغذ نیاوریم و تبدیل به کتاب نکنیم.
این کتاب خوب نوشته شده اما شاهکار نیست. برای من قابلیت مزه مزه کردن ندارد. نفسم را بند نمی آورد. دوره دارد. یا داشت. حداقل برای من. همان بیست سالگی بهترین زمان بود. اگر بلد بودم بیشتر از همدلی و تایید فرانی, روی تجربه های بقیه شخصیت ها تمرکز کنم. که خب بلد نبودم. هیچکداممان بلد نبودیم.
اما یک چیز را همان موقع هم خوب بلد بودم. همان تک جمله. اینکه خوب بودن کافی نیست. دوست داشتنی بودن کافی نیست. اینکه بین این همه دوست داشتن ها یک چیزی شدیدا لنگ میزند. اینکه حالم از این همه دوست داشتن و روابط و آدمهای خوب و دوست داشتنی بهم میخورد اگر نتوانم ذره ای و حتا ذره ای بهشان احترام بگذارم (یا به من احترام بگذارند). ده سال است که آدمها همه دوست داشتنی اند اما در پایان یا از یک جایی به بعد, ناامید کننده و غیر قابل احترام. نبودِ احترام هم دایره ایست که به غیردوست داشتی بودن میرسد.
ده سال است که دلزده ام از هرکه و هرچه که حس احترام در من به وجود نمیاورد.
ده سال است که تکه ای از وجودم فرانی و تکه ای دیگر زویی است و با هم میجنگند. تکه ای دیگر, بادی است و به تکه ی زوییِ وجودم هشدار میدهد. و تکه ای دیگر در من مصرانه میل به سیمور شدن دارد
آقای سلینجر,
مرور دوباره ی همه اینها, باعث شد با اینکه دوستتان ندارم اما به خاطر همدلی شدید به خاطر چیزهایی که لابد از سر گذراندید تا به آن جمله ها برسید, به شما احترام بگذارم.
شاید حرکت روی این دایره احترام, روزی منجر به دوست داشتن تان و خواندن باقی آثارتان شود.
مدتی پیش در راستای پاکسازی قفسه های کتابم, خودم را از شر ترجمه اش خلاص کردم. غافل از اینکه نسخه اصلی این کتاب یک جایی بین وسایلم جا خوش کرده. وقتی هفته پیش بین ریویوها چند خط اثرگذاری خواندم تصمیم به دوباره خوانی گرفتم.
فرانی بیست ساله این بار نه به من نزدیک بود و نه قابل درک. دخترکی بود بی تجربه و جو زده که فکر میکرد به جواب رسیده.
اینبار شخصیت زویی برایم قابل تحمل تر و قابل درک تر بود. کسی که تجربه چیزها را از سر گذرانده و بیهودگی شان را دیده و رهایشان کرده.
هرچند پختگی لازم را نداشت.
امروز بادی را بیشتر میفهمم و خودم را به سیمور نزدیکتر حس میکنم.
در مورد کلیت کتاب اما نظرم نسبت به ده سال قبل افت کرده.
به جز چند جمله قشنگ, چیز جدید و جذاب دیگری برای من نداشت و خیلی جاها تکنیک تندخوانی و اسکن و اسکیم را رویش تمرین کردم هاهاها.
تنها چیزی که در این ده سال در نظرم تغییر نکرده همان تک جمله طلایی فرانی است; جمله ای که جدید نیست و شاهکار سلینجر هم نیست. جمله ای که من و شما هم ته فکرمان و ته دلمان ممکن است هر روز بهش بربخوریم اما روی کاغذ نیاوریم و تبدیل به کتاب نکنیم.
این کتاب خوب نوشته شده اما شاهکار نیست. برای من قابلیت مزه مزه کردن ندارد. نفسم را بند نمی آورد. دوره دارد. یا داشت. حداقل برای من. همان بیست سالگی بهترین زمان بود. اگر بلد بودم بیشتر از همدلی و تایید فرانی, روی تجربه های بقیه شخصیت ها تمرکز کنم. که خب بلد نبودم. هیچکداممان بلد نبودیم.
اما یک چیز را همان موقع هم خوب بلد بودم. همان تک جمله. اینکه خوب بودن کافی نیست. دوست داشتنی بودن کافی نیست. اینکه بین این همه دوست داشتن ها یک چیزی شدیدا لنگ میزند. اینکه حالم از این همه دوست داشتن و روابط و آدمهای خوب و دوست داشتنی بهم میخورد اگر نتوانم ذره ای و حتا ذره ای بهشان احترام بگذارم (یا به من احترام بگذارند). ده سال است که آدمها همه دوست داشتنی اند اما در پایان یا از یک جایی به بعد, ناامید کننده و غیر قابل احترام. نبودِ احترام هم دایره ایست که به غیردوست داشتی بودن میرسد.
ده سال است که دلزده ام از هرکه و هرچه که حس احترام در من به وجود نمیاورد.
ده سال است که تکه ای از وجودم فرانی و تکه ای دیگر زویی است و با هم میجنگند. تکه ای دیگر, بادی است و به تکه ی زوییِ وجودم هشدار میدهد. و تکه ای دیگر در من مصرانه میل به سیمور شدن دارد
آقای سلینجر,
مرور دوباره ی همه اینها, باعث شد با اینکه دوستتان ندارم اما به خاطر همدلی شدید به خاطر چیزهایی که لابد از سر گذراندید تا به آن جمله ها برسید, به شما احترام بگذارم.
شاید حرکت روی این دایره احترام, روزی منجر به دوست داشتن تان و خواندن باقی آثارتان شود.
February 8, 2013
I am the luckiest person in the world. The last few months have led me through an unbroken string of good books. I have had so much fun reading that I'm just in love with books right now.
And isn't that the way it should be?
In any case, Salinger's Franny and Zooey is the most recent in what I hope will be a continuing tradition of engaging, well-written stories. I have to admit I approached the work with some skepticism, having been wholly uninterested in Catcher in the Rye when it was forced upon me in high school (and now, I am looking forward to going back and reading Catcher).
It's really in the dialogue that Franny and Zooey shines. I found their discussions completely absorbing and their subject-matter intriguing. Even the correspondences represented in the work are fun and filled with the kind of silly banter that reminds me of my own letters to my wife before she was my wife.
As far as story goes, it really is pretty slight and primarily relies on four distinct conversations over the course of a few days in which Franny has a sort of spiritual nervous breakdown. I found the whole thing—the breakdown, the conversations, the conclusions—all to be uncomfortably believable in that I could easily imagine such a set of things occurring somewhere in real life.
To conclude, Franny and Zooey is a short book that can be swallowed at breakneck speeds. It would be worth seven times the amount of time I spent on it.
And isn't that the way it should be?
In any case, Salinger's Franny and Zooey is the most recent in what I hope will be a continuing tradition of engaging, well-written stories. I have to admit I approached the work with some skepticism, having been wholly uninterested in Catcher in the Rye when it was forced upon me in high school (and now, I am looking forward to going back and reading Catcher).
It's really in the dialogue that Franny and Zooey shines. I found their discussions completely absorbing and their subject-matter intriguing. Even the correspondences represented in the work are fun and filled with the kind of silly banter that reminds me of my own letters to my wife before she was my wife.
As far as story goes, it really is pretty slight and primarily relies on four distinct conversations over the course of a few days in which Franny has a sort of spiritual nervous breakdown. I found the whole thing—the breakdown, the conversations, the conclusions—all to be uncomfortably believable in that I could easily imagine such a set of things occurring somewhere in real life.
To conclude, Franny and Zooey is a short book that can be swallowed at breakneck speeds. It would be worth seven times the amount of time I spent on it.
March 5, 2024
61st book of 2019.
When I read this last year, I remember thinking I wanted to be Franny's lover. In fact, I have a very distinct memory of lying on my back and reading as my now ex-girlfriend was blow-drying her hair. We were in Cornwall; the window was open, and outside one could see St Ives' houses stretching and curling around the lick of beach, which by this time was quiet. The sun was low, but not set. The light was golden and sleepy in a way, with the premonition of dusk. On my back there, reading, I thought how wonderful Franny is — how scathing she is, how intelligent and keen. My ex-girlfriend, on the other hand, was a conformist — she fit in a hundred crowds, or rather, in the One Crowd of our demographic. I fancied that instead of her being in that room with me, it was Franny. And that thought lingered further into the mealtime, so much so that I began to feel guilty. Was I honestly feeling sore towards her because she wasn't Salinger's fictional Franny Glass? And though of course Franny Glass is rather neurotic, and would probably be far too much for me to handle, I sensed that I loved her somewhat. Or maybe in those moments I had a premonition about my own relationship, as the sky had about the coming dusk, because I realised what she wasn't.
By the time I read Part II I realised Franny was too much for me. - Like one of my favourite songs in the world (my favourite Led Zeppelin song, certainly) says:
"Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born"
I realised I was daydreaming. Now the relationship has ended I am not here to suggest that Franny Glass had anything to do with it. What I am suggesting is that Franny Glass allowed me to peer at something I had otherwise ignored, like a pocket viewfinder on that golden Cornwall evening in August. For that reason, Franny and I have something between us, though I'm not sure what it is anymore.
When I read this last year, I remember thinking I wanted to be Franny's lover. In fact, I have a very distinct memory of lying on my back and reading as my now ex-girlfriend was blow-drying her hair. We were in Cornwall; the window was open, and outside one could see St Ives' houses stretching and curling around the lick of beach, which by this time was quiet. The sun was low, but not set. The light was golden and sleepy in a way, with the premonition of dusk. On my back there, reading, I thought how wonderful Franny is — how scathing she is, how intelligent and keen. My ex-girlfriend, on the other hand, was a conformist — she fit in a hundred crowds, or rather, in the One Crowd of our demographic. I fancied that instead of her being in that room with me, it was Franny. And that thought lingered further into the mealtime, so much so that I began to feel guilty. Was I honestly feeling sore towards her because she wasn't Salinger's fictional Franny Glass? And though of course Franny Glass is rather neurotic, and would probably be far too much for me to handle, I sensed that I loved her somewhat. Or maybe in those moments I had a premonition about my own relationship, as the sky had about the coming dusk, because I realised what she wasn't.
By the time I read Part II I realised Franny was too much for me. - Like one of my favourite songs in the world (my favourite Led Zeppelin song, certainly) says:
"Tryin' to find a woman who's never, never, never been born"
I realised I was daydreaming. Now the relationship has ended I am not here to suggest that Franny Glass had anything to do with it. What I am suggesting is that Franny Glass allowed me to peer at something I had otherwise ignored, like a pocket viewfinder on that golden Cornwall evening in August. For that reason, Franny and I have something between us, though I'm not sure what it is anymore.
January 11, 2016
I just don’t know how I feel about Franny and Zooey. I really don’t. I read it a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t write anything about it, as I couldn’t decide if I loved it, just liked it or absolutely hated it. I can rule out hating it I suppose, as I finished it and I never finish books that I truly despise. And I don’t think I loved it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. My overall reaction, by process of elimination, is a general ambivalence. Part of my issue here is the damn star rating. Two makes it seem like it wasn’t worth the time, and being so short it would have to have been really terrible to not warrant a couple of hours of my day. Three makes it seem like I like it and would recommend it, and I’m not sure that’s the way I want to go either. I’m going to go ahead and try to write this review, and hopefully by doing so I’ll come up with a genuine opinion by the time I am finished.
I generally like to start these things off with a synopsis; it helps me put things in perspective and highlights the most notable aspects of the story. But even here I’m stumped, as there isn’t much plot to work with. F&Z consists of two separate but linked short stories that were originally published a couple of years apart. The eponymous characters are brother and sister, the youngest siblings in a privileged and eccentric New York family, who both appear to be suffering from an overload of existential angst and the pressures of being “gifted.”
We first meet Franny Glass on a lunch date with her college beau, an unremarkable 1950’s college intellectual stereotype. It gradually becomes evident that she is experiencing some sort of mental crisis. Nearly the entire episode is a conversation by which we receive hints that Franny’s behavior is being influenced by an odd religious book she has been carrying around with her. Over the course of the meal, definite shades of Holden Caufield emerge in Franny’s disdain for academia, only rather than railing against the wholesale phoniness of adults, she attacks the pretension and self-involvement of the academic world (not that the two concepts are all that different). I’ll just say, I find Franny’s rejection of self-involvement to be a little ironic, as it’s her own existential crisis and subsequent self-obsession that seems to be prompting her dissatisfaction in the first place. Franny’s tale is the shorter of the two, and it leaves off without any real resolution to the questions it has provoked.
Zooey Glass is a conflicted, self-absorbed “genius” actor who is still trying to live up to the promise of his precocious childhood while coping with the family skeletons that are collecting dust in the corners of the nostalgia-riddled Glass home. Unlike “Franny,” which doesn’t stand alone well, “Zooey” is a tiny universe of its own; in less than 100 pages, we learn all of the significant history of the family. The story opens with Zooey reading a letter from his older brother; a long, rambling correspondence that contains an oblique history of the Glass family in its slowly crumbling pages. Here I have to give Salinger credit for stuffing so much exposition into a letter and managing to make it one of the most engaging parts of the story. The fact that Buddy Glass wrote such a long letter in the 1950’s, when written correspondence was on its way out of vogue, says something about the eccentric nature of the Glass family. Also, the secrets revealed so early in the story are an expert set-up for the deluge of self-analysis to follow. Another high point: Mrs. Glass, the classic downtrodden Catholic matriarch of a strange and conflicted family. She worries, she smokes, she complains and she intrudes, but she also clearly loves her ungrateful, troubled brood.
We spend a while with Zooey as he reads his brother’s letter in the bath (he’s vain, that Zooey) and interacts, rather unpleasantly, with his mother. After we get to know him, and in my case dislike him more than a little, we discover that Franny’s story will continue within Zooey’s, because they are essentially dealing with the same thing and our time with Zooey and his letter has shown us what is most likely driving Franny’s apparent mania. Both are trying to move forward after a bizarre childhood education and brief notoriety as “gifted” children, all the while surrounded by the artifacts of that time and the knowledge that one of their siblings couldn’t shake these things and move on the way they so desperately want (and need) to. There is a quiet and not-so-quiet desperation in The Conversation that Zooey instigates with his sister. And instigation is an important distinction here; Zooey loves to hear himself talk, and he also loves to provoke. The Conversation generally consists of Zooey obnoxiously, but not entirely ineffectually, prodding Fanny’s mind like a tongue worries a sore tooth.
The Conversation is the bulk of the “story.” It boils down to a strange juxtaposition of self-involved privilege and genuinely problematic psychological issues. Are they just poor little rich kids? Sometimes it seems so, but there is undoubtedly a darkness to the exchange that keeps it from sinking completely under the combined weight of Zooey’s narcissism and Franny’s naivete. There are revelations embedded in their talk, muted but somewhat startling insights into the nature of the Glass family history and its legacy for the youngest generation. Psychoanalysis was the fad of the day, and there are definite shades of self-diagnosis and justification going on, particularly in Zooey. Franny is flailing and searching, demanding some kind of solid truth from the world and retreating from it at the same time, while her brother turns the search inward and tries to rouse Franny to do the same.
There is no real progress or resolution. It rambles, we listen. I found much of it interesting, but it was difficult to divorce my interest in what was being discussed with how little I liked Franny or Zooey. They did, in the end, seem like privileged kids with barely relatable problems. But at the same time, I found myself undeniably fascinated with the Glass family as an entity. The past hangs heavily over the family, and the youngest children haven’t figured out how to carry the weight. The fact that Zooey is prompting, or rather, forcing Fanny to think about it all is at least one step in the right direction for their mental survival, but I don’t know if I really bought the “ah ha” moment at the end. Franny’s bizarre obsession seems alien, a construct to initiate The Conversation rather than a genuine attempt to relieve some sort of hazy dissatisfaction with the world. I suppose it is intended to carry some sort of symbolism about human struggle and the strange ways we find solace, as well as reflect on the unconventional Glass family itself, but it felt forced and pretentious. Then again, pretention seems to be the Glass forte, with the children all railing against something with their pseudo-intellectual analysis of everything and their borrowed, threadbare spirituality. There is something very familiar, very 1950’s about all of this, but not having much experience with writing from that time I can’t quite put my finger on it.
So I have essentially reached the end of my ramble, and I still feel the same ambivalence. Which is perhaps for the best, as that is pretty much how this book pans out. There is no resolution; nothing definitive really happens. I guess I’ll go ahead and give this one a 3, since it interested me enough to prompt this long-winded analysis, but I still feel pretty up in the air about it. I think I will try to read some of Salinger’s other stories and get a better grasp on the Glass family and Salinger’s style.
I generally like to start these things off with a synopsis; it helps me put things in perspective and highlights the most notable aspects of the story. But even here I’m stumped, as there isn’t much plot to work with. F&Z consists of two separate but linked short stories that were originally published a couple of years apart. The eponymous characters are brother and sister, the youngest siblings in a privileged and eccentric New York family, who both appear to be suffering from an overload of existential angst and the pressures of being “gifted.”
We first meet Franny Glass on a lunch date with her college beau, an unremarkable 1950’s college intellectual stereotype. It gradually becomes evident that she is experiencing some sort of mental crisis. Nearly the entire episode is a conversation by which we receive hints that Franny’s behavior is being influenced by an odd religious book she has been carrying around with her. Over the course of the meal, definite shades of Holden Caufield emerge in Franny’s disdain for academia, only rather than railing against the wholesale phoniness of adults, she attacks the pretension and self-involvement of the academic world (not that the two concepts are all that different). I’ll just say, I find Franny’s rejection of self-involvement to be a little ironic, as it’s her own existential crisis and subsequent self-obsession that seems to be prompting her dissatisfaction in the first place. Franny’s tale is the shorter of the two, and it leaves off without any real resolution to the questions it has provoked.
Zooey Glass is a conflicted, self-absorbed “genius” actor who is still trying to live up to the promise of his precocious childhood while coping with the family skeletons that are collecting dust in the corners of the nostalgia-riddled Glass home. Unlike “Franny,” which doesn’t stand alone well, “Zooey” is a tiny universe of its own; in less than 100 pages, we learn all of the significant history of the family. The story opens with Zooey reading a letter from his older brother; a long, rambling correspondence that contains an oblique history of the Glass family in its slowly crumbling pages. Here I have to give Salinger credit for stuffing so much exposition into a letter and managing to make it one of the most engaging parts of the story. The fact that Buddy Glass wrote such a long letter in the 1950’s, when written correspondence was on its way out of vogue, says something about the eccentric nature of the Glass family. Also, the secrets revealed so early in the story are an expert set-up for the deluge of self-analysis to follow. Another high point: Mrs. Glass, the classic downtrodden Catholic matriarch of a strange and conflicted family. She worries, she smokes, she complains and she intrudes, but she also clearly loves her ungrateful, troubled brood.
We spend a while with Zooey as he reads his brother’s letter in the bath (he’s vain, that Zooey) and interacts, rather unpleasantly, with his mother. After we get to know him, and in my case dislike him more than a little, we discover that Franny’s story will continue within Zooey’s, because they are essentially dealing with the same thing and our time with Zooey and his letter has shown us what is most likely driving Franny’s apparent mania. Both are trying to move forward after a bizarre childhood education and brief notoriety as “gifted” children, all the while surrounded by the artifacts of that time and the knowledge that one of their siblings couldn’t shake these things and move on the way they so desperately want (and need) to. There is a quiet and not-so-quiet desperation in The Conversation that Zooey instigates with his sister. And instigation is an important distinction here; Zooey loves to hear himself talk, and he also loves to provoke. The Conversation generally consists of Zooey obnoxiously, but not entirely ineffectually, prodding Fanny’s mind like a tongue worries a sore tooth.
The Conversation is the bulk of the “story.” It boils down to a strange juxtaposition of self-involved privilege and genuinely problematic psychological issues. Are they just poor little rich kids? Sometimes it seems so, but there is undoubtedly a darkness to the exchange that keeps it from sinking completely under the combined weight of Zooey’s narcissism and Franny’s naivete. There are revelations embedded in their talk, muted but somewhat startling insights into the nature of the Glass family history and its legacy for the youngest generation. Psychoanalysis was the fad of the day, and there are definite shades of self-diagnosis and justification going on, particularly in Zooey. Franny is flailing and searching, demanding some kind of solid truth from the world and retreating from it at the same time, while her brother turns the search inward and tries to rouse Franny to do the same.
There is no real progress or resolution. It rambles, we listen. I found much of it interesting, but it was difficult to divorce my interest in what was being discussed with how little I liked Franny or Zooey. They did, in the end, seem like privileged kids with barely relatable problems. But at the same time, I found myself undeniably fascinated with the Glass family as an entity. The past hangs heavily over the family, and the youngest children haven’t figured out how to carry the weight. The fact that Zooey is prompting, or rather, forcing Fanny to think about it all is at least one step in the right direction for their mental survival, but I don’t know if I really bought the “ah ha” moment at the end. Franny’s bizarre obsession seems alien, a construct to initiate The Conversation rather than a genuine attempt to relieve some sort of hazy dissatisfaction with the world. I suppose it is intended to carry some sort of symbolism about human struggle and the strange ways we find solace, as well as reflect on the unconventional Glass family itself, but it felt forced and pretentious. Then again, pretention seems to be the Glass forte, with the children all railing against something with their pseudo-intellectual analysis of everything and their borrowed, threadbare spirituality. There is something very familiar, very 1950’s about all of this, but not having much experience with writing from that time I can’t quite put my finger on it.
So I have essentially reached the end of my ramble, and I still feel the same ambivalence. Which is perhaps for the best, as that is pretty much how this book pans out. There is no resolution; nothing definitive really happens. I guess I’ll go ahead and give this one a 3, since it interested me enough to prompt this long-winded analysis, but I still feel pretty up in the air about it. I think I will try to read some of Salinger’s other stories and get a better grasp on the Glass family and Salinger’s style.
April 17, 2013
« Accidenti, » disse, « ce ne sono di cose belle al mondo. E quando dico belle intendo belle. Siamo degli idioti a svicolare sempre dalle cose. Sempre, sempre, sempre lì ad annotare tutti gli accidenti che capitano al nostro piccolo e schifoso io ».
Capitano, talvolta, degli incidenti straordinari. Tu sei lì con la guardia abbassata, a carezzare il tuo piccolo e schifoso io, e d’un tratto le parole giuste ti cascano tra capo e collo come una secchiata d’acqua fredda (o meglio, come un confortante tè caldo quando sei raffreddata). La risposta che cercavi da settimane… ti basta allungare la mano per prenderla. E tutto avviene con una tale disinvoltura, una tale generosità da questo disinteressato signor Salinger che non puoi fare a meno di rivolgergli un sorriso dolcissimo, tra le lacrime che già t’ha fatto scendere.
Ho raccolto questo libro con me durante un viaggio in autobus. La copertina, sul retro, non svela nulla della trama. L’ho scelto dalla pila dei non-letti unicamente perché sembrava abbastanza leggero da tenere in borsa. Eppure, per qualche buffa coincidenza, non avrei potuto leggere questo breve romanzo in un momento migliore.
Non avrei potuto leggerlo in un momento migliore perché anch’io, come la Franny che si affaccia nel titolo, sto attraversando « un esaurimento nervoso di quart’ordine », per dirla con le parole del fratello Zooey. Non mi sono messa in testa di aggiustare il mio mondo biascicando ininterrottamente una preghiera a Dio, ma ho appuntato in un quaderno il proposito (altrettanto insano) di fare più torte e più passeggiate. Anch’io, come Franny, « sono stufa di tutti questi ego, ego, ego. Del mio e di quello di tutti gli altri. Sono stufa della gente che vuol “arrivare” da qualche parte, fare qualcosa di notevole eccetera, essere un tipo interessante. É disgustoso, disgustoso e basta. Me ne infischio di quello che dicono. [...] Sono stufa di non avere il coraggio di essere nessuno e basta. Sono stufa di me e di tutti quelli che vogliono fare colpo, in un modo o nell’altro ». Sono preda, cioè, di una cieca, distruttiva misantropia, che non risparmia me stessa né gli altri e che sento destinata a portarmi rannicchiata in posizione fetale sul divano, con mamma che mi spinge sotto il naso una tazza di brodo di pollo e un gatto grasso avvolto nel plaid.
Essere Franny non è piacevole per Franny né per coloro che la circondano: è avvolgersi in una cappa di ritrosia e inerzia, volersi del male e voler male agli altri perché non ci si ama più. Avere paura di amarsi, soprattutto, paura che stimarsi il giusto sia di per sé un atto di narcisismo, che dare una valutazione, per quanto oggettiva, delle proprie capacità sia necessariamente una dimostrazione di superbia intellettuale. Conseguentemente, disistimarsi e, quello che riesce di meno, simulare una umiltà che caratterialmente non si possiede, per poi esplodere, di tanto in tanto, in commenti di una sentenziosità caustica e faziosa.
C’è in Franny qualcosa dell’Holden, ma c’è soprattutto Franny, un personaggio a tutto tondo, così vivo che quasi pare di poterci uscire per un caffè. E la vitalità, l’assoluta realisticità sono quello che di più colpisce nella creazione cesellata di qualsiasi personaggio: da Lane, ragazzo di Franny (che, nella sua spocchia da studente di college, fa quasi tenerezza) alla signora Glass, madre di Franny, Zooey e degli altri fratelli Glass, vestaglia e sigaretta, dispensatrice di brodi, pragmatica e vigile.
Parole a parte merita la straordinaria figura di Zooey, che emerge dalla pagina con tutta una gestualità e un modo di parlare, un affabulatore così affascinante, un provocatore così sofisticato, che davvero balza su dalle righe per dialogare col lettore.
I fratelli Glass sono accomunati da una straordinaria intelligenza e, quel che più conta, da una certa voracità di conoscenza. Tutti e sette, dal 1927 al 1943, hanno preso parte a un programma radiofonico intitolato “Bambino eccezionale”, da cui (è legittimo dirlo) non si sono mai più ripresi. Sono cresciuti cercando di meritare sempre il titolo di “bambini eccezionali”, di essere all’altezza del proprio passato di piccoli geni e di quello dei fratelli. Puntellano, nonostante gli anni e i colpi del sistema, una certa idea di sé che hanno costruito nella prima infanzia, un’idea di superiorità intellettuale ma anche di anormalità. È Zooey stesso a definire lui e Franny degli “anormali”. Illuminanti, a tal proposito, le parole della signora Glass: « Non capisco proprio a cosa serva sapere tante cose ed essere tanto intelligenti e così via, se non riuscite a essere felici ». Una frase con cui ciascuna madre – specialmente la mia – potrebbe uscirsene da un momento all’altro.
Il cuore del romanzo è una conversazione tra Franny e Zooey, sollecitato dalla madre a “fare un discorsetto” alla sorella minore. Niente di straordinario, nessuna evoluzione pirotecnica nella trama. Con grande spontaneità Salinger ci invita a prender parte a un esercizio per cambiare il nostro angolo prospettico, le nostre lenti di osservazione del mondo. Vogliamo guardarlo con la lente del nostro ego affaticato, acuto e schifato dalla realtà? Vogliamo schifarci di tutto e di tutto spogliarci? O vogliamo, al contrario, pensare che in ognuno di quelli che schifiamo e da cui vogliamo allontanarci c’è magari un piccolo ego costretto in spoglie che non gli appartengono, un ego piangente e solo? Vogliamo essere autoreferenziali, pensare di poter cavarcela da soli, o vogliamo, per il bene nostro e degli altri, esercitare (verso noi stessi e verso gli altri) la funzione straordinaria della generosità?
Ecco, nelle parole gentili, ironiche, provocatorie che Zooey rivolge a Franny io ci ho visto tutta la lunga ed elaborata risposta che cercavo da giorni. Risposta che né amici né parenti erano riusciti a fornirmi in modo così spiritoso, esaustivo e ben scritto.
Ben scritto, occorre sottolinearlo, perché questo breve romanzo è anche un gioiellino di bella scrittura, scrittura intelligente e raffinata, vivace ed eclettica, dotata di una grandiosa lucidità di analisi e di un piglio dinamicissimo nelle descrizioni. Un Salinger che non mi ha fatto in alcun modo rimpiangere “Il giovane Holden” e di cui ho deciso, da ora in avanti, di divorare metodicamente la produzione.
Magari si potesse avere un piccolo Zooey così saggio, formato statuina, da mettere sul comodino quando si sta male. Nel caso ne trovaste uno, sapete cosa regalarmi per il compleanno.
Capitano, talvolta, degli incidenti straordinari. Tu sei lì con la guardia abbassata, a carezzare il tuo piccolo e schifoso io, e d’un tratto le parole giuste ti cascano tra capo e collo come una secchiata d’acqua fredda (o meglio, come un confortante tè caldo quando sei raffreddata). La risposta che cercavi da settimane… ti basta allungare la mano per prenderla. E tutto avviene con una tale disinvoltura, una tale generosità da questo disinteressato signor Salinger che non puoi fare a meno di rivolgergli un sorriso dolcissimo, tra le lacrime che già t’ha fatto scendere.
Ho raccolto questo libro con me durante un viaggio in autobus. La copertina, sul retro, non svela nulla della trama. L’ho scelto dalla pila dei non-letti unicamente perché sembrava abbastanza leggero da tenere in borsa. Eppure, per qualche buffa coincidenza, non avrei potuto leggere questo breve romanzo in un momento migliore.
Non avrei potuto leggerlo in un momento migliore perché anch’io, come la Franny che si affaccia nel titolo, sto attraversando « un esaurimento nervoso di quart’ordine », per dirla con le parole del fratello Zooey. Non mi sono messa in testa di aggiustare il mio mondo biascicando ininterrottamente una preghiera a Dio, ma ho appuntato in un quaderno il proposito (altrettanto insano) di fare più torte e più passeggiate. Anch’io, come Franny, « sono stufa di tutti questi ego, ego, ego. Del mio e di quello di tutti gli altri. Sono stufa della gente che vuol “arrivare” da qualche parte, fare qualcosa di notevole eccetera, essere un tipo interessante. É disgustoso, disgustoso e basta. Me ne infischio di quello che dicono. [...] Sono stufa di non avere il coraggio di essere nessuno e basta. Sono stufa di me e di tutti quelli che vogliono fare colpo, in un modo o nell’altro ». Sono preda, cioè, di una cieca, distruttiva misantropia, che non risparmia me stessa né gli altri e che sento destinata a portarmi rannicchiata in posizione fetale sul divano, con mamma che mi spinge sotto il naso una tazza di brodo di pollo e un gatto grasso avvolto nel plaid.
Essere Franny non è piacevole per Franny né per coloro che la circondano: è avvolgersi in una cappa di ritrosia e inerzia, volersi del male e voler male agli altri perché non ci si ama più. Avere paura di amarsi, soprattutto, paura che stimarsi il giusto sia di per sé un atto di narcisismo, che dare una valutazione, per quanto oggettiva, delle proprie capacità sia necessariamente una dimostrazione di superbia intellettuale. Conseguentemente, disistimarsi e, quello che riesce di meno, simulare una umiltà che caratterialmente non si possiede, per poi esplodere, di tanto in tanto, in commenti di una sentenziosità caustica e faziosa.
C’è in Franny qualcosa dell’Holden, ma c’è soprattutto Franny, un personaggio a tutto tondo, così vivo che quasi pare di poterci uscire per un caffè. E la vitalità, l’assoluta realisticità sono quello che di più colpisce nella creazione cesellata di qualsiasi personaggio: da Lane, ragazzo di Franny (che, nella sua spocchia da studente di college, fa quasi tenerezza) alla signora Glass, madre di Franny, Zooey e degli altri fratelli Glass, vestaglia e sigaretta, dispensatrice di brodi, pragmatica e vigile.
Parole a parte merita la straordinaria figura di Zooey, che emerge dalla pagina con tutta una gestualità e un modo di parlare, un affabulatore così affascinante, un provocatore così sofisticato, che davvero balza su dalle righe per dialogare col lettore.
I fratelli Glass sono accomunati da una straordinaria intelligenza e, quel che più conta, da una certa voracità di conoscenza. Tutti e sette, dal 1927 al 1943, hanno preso parte a un programma radiofonico intitolato “Bambino eccezionale”, da cui (è legittimo dirlo) non si sono mai più ripresi. Sono cresciuti cercando di meritare sempre il titolo di “bambini eccezionali”, di essere all’altezza del proprio passato di piccoli geni e di quello dei fratelli. Puntellano, nonostante gli anni e i colpi del sistema, una certa idea di sé che hanno costruito nella prima infanzia, un’idea di superiorità intellettuale ma anche di anormalità. È Zooey stesso a definire lui e Franny degli “anormali”. Illuminanti, a tal proposito, le parole della signora Glass: « Non capisco proprio a cosa serva sapere tante cose ed essere tanto intelligenti e così via, se non riuscite a essere felici ». Una frase con cui ciascuna madre – specialmente la mia – potrebbe uscirsene da un momento all’altro.
Il cuore del romanzo è una conversazione tra Franny e Zooey, sollecitato dalla madre a “fare un discorsetto” alla sorella minore. Niente di straordinario, nessuna evoluzione pirotecnica nella trama. Con grande spontaneità Salinger ci invita a prender parte a un esercizio per cambiare il nostro angolo prospettico, le nostre lenti di osservazione del mondo. Vogliamo guardarlo con la lente del nostro ego affaticato, acuto e schifato dalla realtà? Vogliamo schifarci di tutto e di tutto spogliarci? O vogliamo, al contrario, pensare che in ognuno di quelli che schifiamo e da cui vogliamo allontanarci c’è magari un piccolo ego costretto in spoglie che non gli appartengono, un ego piangente e solo? Vogliamo essere autoreferenziali, pensare di poter cavarcela da soli, o vogliamo, per il bene nostro e degli altri, esercitare (verso noi stessi e verso gli altri) la funzione straordinaria della generosità?
Ecco, nelle parole gentili, ironiche, provocatorie che Zooey rivolge a Franny io ci ho visto tutta la lunga ed elaborata risposta che cercavo da giorni. Risposta che né amici né parenti erano riusciti a fornirmi in modo così spiritoso, esaustivo e ben scritto.
Ben scritto, occorre sottolinearlo, perché questo breve romanzo è anche un gioiellino di bella scrittura, scrittura intelligente e raffinata, vivace ed eclettica, dotata di una grandiosa lucidità di analisi e di un piglio dinamicissimo nelle descrizioni. Un Salinger che non mi ha fatto in alcun modo rimpiangere “Il giovane Holden” e di cui ho deciso, da ora in avanti, di divorare metodicamente la produzione.
Magari si potesse avere un piccolo Zooey così saggio, formato statuina, da mettere sul comodino quando si sta male. Nel caso ne trovaste uno, sapete cosa regalarmi per il compleanno.
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