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’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.5/5¹ 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 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.
What do You think about Franny And Zooey (2001)?
Ugh I love Salinger. It's a crime that he left behind just a handful of work. This collection contains a short story (Franny) and a novella (Zooey). Both deal with typical Salingerian problems (death, grief, "what is the true meaning of life" and whatnot) and he handles them really well. His writing is nothing short of superb and flawless. I do feel that Zooey went on for a bit too long however. Spending that much time with Salinger's characters can be a bit trying (hence the universal hate of Holden Caulfield). I feel that this is the weakest of his work that I've read thus far though. I still think Catcher is his greatest work, followed by Nine Stories. However I would still recommend this collection. It contains some of Salinger's best writing and furthers the melancholic chronicle of the Glass family. Note: I suggest that before reading this book that you read Salinger's short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish. The stories of Seymour will make more sense to you after reading it.
—Barry Pierce
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?
—Mariel
Eu nem sou religioso, mas meu deus, como odiei este livro. Sou oficialmente um hater de J. D. Salinger. Pior, sou um anti-Salinger. Não posso deixar nunca que alguém que esteja para vir ouça falar no seu nome porque não o posso deixar ser de mais ninguém. Sim, odeio-o por querê-lo só para mim, por ser tão ridiculamente o espelho de todas as agonias que nunca fui capaz de exteriorizar. O The Catcher In The Rye era a minha bíblia, mas o que dizer depois disto? Por favor, cala-te só um minuto, deixa-me descansar.
—André Shart
