These bitches smoked so many cigarettes

کتابی با مفاهیمی عمیق و نگاه و جهان‌بینی ‌ویژه سلینجر!
اما این داستان نکته‌ها‌! دارد به عنوان نمونه:
یک:
خیلی‌ها نمی‌تونن با این کتاب ارتباط خوبی برقرار کنن
دو:
باید حال خوبی برای خوندنش داشته باشین
سه:
قسمت دوم کتاب(زویی)
داستان نیست بلکه همونطوری‌که اول کتاب هم اشاره میشه
این بخشی از یک فیلم ضبط شده هست بدون جرح و تعدیل!
و بعد:
جملات و افکار درخشانی در این کتاب هست که نمیشه بی‌تفاوت از کنارشون گذشت و اینکه سلینجر فقط سلینجر است و بس!

میدونم که این یه اثر ادبی کلاسیکه و نباید انتظار داشت پر از اتفاقات هیجان‌انگیز و بالا و پایین‌های داستانی باشه، اما خوندن ۱۶۰ صفحه فقط دیالوگ خارج از تحمل منه. از طرفی من توی داستان صرفا دنبال هیجان و توییست نیستم، اتفاقا برعکس از توصیف احساسات و روابط بین آدمها خیلی بیشتر لذت می‌برم و اینجا هم دنبال همین بودم؛ ولی شخصیت‌ها لحن خیلی تصنعی و ادا طور داشتن، حرفهاشون خیللللی استیج شده(؟) بود و اعصابم رو خرد می‌کرد، هیچکس توی دنیا اینجور جمله‌های مصنوعی و درازی به کار نمی‌بره. نمیدونم چقدر ازین مشکل از ترجمه بود و چقدرش از متن اصلی.
خوندن هر صفحه برام هزار سال طول می‌کشید و بعضی جاها به جملات فلسفی-عرفانی برمی‌خوردم که می‌شد بهشون فکر کرد ولی من انتظار داشتم از کل داستان لذت ببرم و نه از تک و توک جملات قصارش.
قصد داشتم فیلم اقتباسی مهرجویی رو هم ببینم ولی فکر کنم فعلا نرم سراغش چون کلا با فضا و سبک و هدف داستان ارتباط برقرار نکردم‌‌.‌..

و همچنین؛ چقددددرررر سیگار می‌کشیدن! اینطوری بود که هنوز قبلی رو تا ته نکشیده، بعدی رو از پاکتش درمی‌آوردن آماده باشه یوقت بین دوتا سیگار دو ثانیه وقفه نیفته!

“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
Hardcover Text – $89.40 for a 2010 Boxed Set of Hardcover Salinger Books on Mercari
$117.70 for a first edition from EBay

2025 Reading Schedule
JantA Town Like Alice
FebtBirdsong
MartCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
AprtWar and Peace
MaytThe Woman in White
JuntAtonement
JultThe Shadow of the Wind
AugtJude the Obscure
SeptUlysses
OcttVanity Fair
NovtA Fine Balance
DectGerminal

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Salinger, um dos Bartlebys de Vila-Matas...
A sua obra é pequena mas grandiosa. Afastou-se da escrita e da vida social nos anos sessenta e o pouco que se sabe da sua vida não passa de especulação. Faleceu em 2010.
Além do romance À Espera no Centeio, escreveu novelas e contos, tendo alguns como personagens a família Glass, cujos sete irmãos são prodígios de inteligência e infelicidade...Um dos irmãos - Buddy, o escritor - é considerado, pelos estudiosos de Salinger, como o seu alter ego; outros são protagonistas de alguns dos contos incluídos em Nove Histórias.

Franny e Zooey são dois dos irmãos Glass que tentam encontrar uma forma de viver em equilíbrio, libertarem-se do passado, esconderem-se de si próprios (?)... seja procurando o silêncio e a imobilidade, seja repetindo uma oração a Jesus até que "a oração passe dos lábios e da cabeça para um centro do coração e se torne uma função automática da pessoa, como os batimentos do coração."

A narrativa vive do diálogo e na realidade nada acontece, sendo mais uma novela de ideias do que de acontecimentos, no entanto é fascinante mais ainda se for complementada pela leitura posterior de Nove Histórias.

Y O U T H

Se qualcuno volesse girare un film di questo libro, lo sceneggiatore se la caverebbe con poco.
Tre o quattro scene. Qualche flashback qua e là per dare movimento.
Un ristorante, un bagno, un salotto.

Più o meno:

Franny che parla con Lane
Bessie che parla con Zooey
Zooey che parla con Franny

Poi vabbè, chi sono e quello che si dicono mica ve lo racconto.

Però boh.
Forse è solo che troppi dialoghi mi distraggono. Sono come i bambini.
Ed è un problema mio, mica di quel geniaccio di JD. [73/100]

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.

(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

بالاخره برای بار دوم تموم شد. چقدر سخت بود خوندن این کتاب برای من هم بار اول هم بار دوم.
به نظر من خیلی ربط داره تو چه حال فکری این کتاب رو بخونین. خود من دو سال پیش (چقدر زود گذشت) که با تمام وجود درگیر چنین دغدغه هایی بودم و این کتاب رو خوندم، عاشقش شدم و میخواستم حتما برای بار دوم هم بخونمش، ولی خب با اینکه باز هم قلم سالینجر شگفت زده ام کرد تا حد زیادی، ولی مثل بار اول نبود برام.

نثر سالینجر محشره، طنز و کنایه های این بشر و توصیفات دقیقش عالیه. البته آخرای کتاب دیگه یکم زیادی بود، ولی عاشق این طور نوشتنم.
نامه بادی به زویی رو بارها و بارها خوندم و همیشه از خوندنش وحشت کردم. چطور کسی می تونه اینقدر خوب این چیزا رو درک کنه و اینقدر خوب بنویسه.
من داستان نویسی سالینجر رو بی اندازه دوست داشتم تو این کتاب،
شخصیت ها همه برای من دوست داشتنی بودند، بلااستثنا، اینقدر که خوب توصیف شده بودند، حتی اون هایی که به ظاهر حضور نداشتن.
و اما حرف های جدی سالینجر.همه اون جاهایی که بحران مطرح میشه خوبن، ولی اون جایی که راه حل و تفکر ارائه میشه، ممکنه به مذاق همه خوش نیاد، مخصوصا بعضی حرفای زویی درمورد مسیح و ... به هرحال مشخصا سالینجر تحت تاثیر عرفان شرق بوده.

بازهم میگم نامه بادی به زویی چقدددددددددر خوب بود.

ای کاش بشه همه زندگی رو دوست داشت.

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.

n  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.n

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.n  

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.

nCompare 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. n  

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.

nTo 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:

n  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.n

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.

I’ve never been to 1955 New York or had to hang out with pretentious New York intellectuals. Perhaps this makes the book a little hard to relate to. Some of the details and slang are hard to pick up, as well.

But one thing that is indisputable: this book has great pacing, dialogue, and amazing descriptions that set the scene and create a rich world. At the heart of Salinger’s great writing is a spiritual crisis that feels immediate, personal, and yet universal.

I have a very clear memory of giving up on this book when I was a college student. At the very beginning of the second story, “Zooey,” Salinger describes the story as a kind of “home movie.” I remember at the time that I expected the story to meander and go nowhere. I expected that the story would have very little beginning, middle, and end. So...I put the book down.

The book’s two stories, however, are very clearly stories. To be fair, they often use a lot of description, rely heavily on dialogue to move the story forward, but they do have clear beginnings, middles, and ends. The characters go through profound changes in very short spaces. In many ways, the short stories serve as a kind of play in two acts--but they are also fantastic examples of short story writing.

For aspiring writers, there are lessons everywhere: how to use description, how to use stories within stories, how to create great dialogue.

One amazing detail that demonstrates just how much aspiring writers have to learn from this book comes on page 126: “Zooey was now gazing abstractedly at an old root-beer stain on the ceiling plaster, which he himself had made nineteen or twenty years earlier, with a water pistol.” Details like this, placed thoughtfully throughout the story, give a sense of dimension and history. In short, they suggest worlds within worlds.

If you’re an English major, parts of this book will seem hilarious to you: in the midst of Franny’s mental breakdown, her boyfriend spends a great deal of time trying to tell her about how awesome one of his English papers is. His urgings, moreover, are usually little more than: “You got to read this goddamn paper, I’m telling you.” The book does a good job of making you feel and see what it’s like to see the world through Franny or Zooey’s eyes. And in true J.D. Salinger style his main characters are not entirely blameless, flawless creatures--they are instead, self-described “monsters,” as bad as the things they rail against in their many monologues.

The book is also a great example of a work that effectively uses a story within a story. The book “The Way of the Pilgrim” serves an important point in the book. Also, Buddy Glass’s letter serves an important role. Like the long descriptions of parts of the house in “Zooey” the use of stories within stories helps to establish a larger world. (Who knows, some aspiring writer might one day choose to put this book in a short story about a person going through a similar spiritual crisis). The book’s world seems three dimensional, a space that could expand endlessly. No doubt, the success of Franny and Zooey comes partly from Salinger’s efforts in other stories about the Glass family.

There is also a deep spiritual conversation that takes place at the center of the book. Essentially, this conversation is the same one Holden Caulfield attempted to have with various characters in Catcher in the Rye. This book isn’t just a retread of that conversation, but rather a deepening and broadening of it. The key dilemma of the book is one many in their teens and twenties will know well (okay, perhaps even people in their thirties can have this same kind of crisis). The skillful handling of this spiritual crisis is the reason why I think that people, even twenty years from now, will continue to find J.D. Salinger books in their local libraries and think that the book was placed there--almost divinely--for them to find. It has that special power (that only books seem to have) of being written in a way that makes you think the author wrote it especially for you.

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.