This book, the third by Jerome David Salinger to grace the pages of this blog and, no less, upon my third reading of it, is comprised of a long short story and a short novella that together explore a messy emotional incident that occurred, and was more or less resolved, between the two youngest siblings of the Glass family. Of Salinger's four books, it is I think the most spiritual in theme and content, if not in tone (though all of his works are somewhat spiritual in tone). In this post I would like to start sheafing through the hundreds of scribbled pages of mental notes that I've accrued over years of loving Salinger's writings, and organise them into a rough explanation of what I think makes his work so special, so unique, and how it can help its reader grow. I'm doing this in this post because I've already done a Salingeresque bleeding-heart post on the other Glass family novella-pair, and a cursory reviewer's overview of his collection of shorts, so I'll take this one to be my punchy, philosophical, hopefully insightful, tremendously precocious attempt at some literary insight, at least of how I've read him. Astute readers will note that I have not yet reread Salinger's most famous work and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, but rest assured I will do soon (it's currently under my pillow with a bookmark nestled just inside the front cover, waiting). Seeing as his novel is more self-contained than these other three works, I'll here discuss how Franny & Zooey, as well as the other two, help us build up a framework in which to understand the driving motors, the soul, of Salinger's writing, which I feel manifests itself more tangibly in the other works - but understanding which is the key to properly getting any of them, including his novel, which works well as a stand-alone, but seen in the context of the worldview revealed by his others is an almost incomparably brilliant book.
Note - if you're sketchy on the following point you'll probably have stopped reading already, but please bear in mind that I am not a scholar of literature by any measure. The following analysis is that of a purebred amateur (I haven't even read the Sparknotes for it, though to do so would be thoroughly against the spirit of the Glass family so who cares), and so please, dear reader, take no shame or pride in disagreeing, but I hope you find my thoughts on the matter at least interesting, as I feel that thinking them through has thoroughly deepened my appreciation of Salinger's books, and has thus also built character; and it may also do for others. But before I dive into self-indulgent theory I shall fulfil the chief obligation of this blog: to summarise the book and recommend it.
There is first a long short story, called Franny, concerning a terrible date that Franny Glass, the youngest of the Glass siblings, has with her boyfriend Lane Coutell on a short return from college. She despairs at his ambitious student-like normalcy, rants against egoism and pretense, shrugs off any proper conversation and neglects to eat throughout their lunch date. The only thing that seems to perk her back into life is talking about a book that she's been obsessively reading, called The Way of a Pilgrim, about a Russian peasant who tries to learn a mystical method of prayer, and then travels, humbly sharing it with others. Lane doesn't pick up on the fact that this is the only thing his clearly damaged girlfriend is currently able to find any genuine interest in at all, and he doesn't listen to her explanation. She has a nervous breakdown in the bathroom and later faints.
There is secondly a short novella, called Zooey, concerning the attempts of the second-youngest Glass sibling, Zooey, and their mother Bessie, to rouse Franny from some kind of emotional crisis that she's fallen into on the family sofa. He is depicted first bantering at his mother harshly from a bathtub, later neatening up to go to a meeting to discuss a poorish script he's been talked into acting in. Before leaving the apartment, he drops into the lounge, and talks to Franny at length about her predicament, angering and upsetting her considerably with his incisive tactless analysis of why she feels the way she does. After a couple of other fruitless tactics (pretending to be one of her other brothers by disguising his voice over the phone, dredging up many a memory of previous philosophy-induced breakdowns within the enigmatic precocious Glass family, briefly even attempting a vaudeville performance), he finally launches into an inspiring finale about the nature of faith and joy and the objects of these two phenomena, and though he delivers this with a rather blasé academic bent, it does seem to work in fixing his sister's mind.
Summarising a Salinger text is more or less completely pointless. These are two of the most human, most thought-provoking, most honest, rambling yet blunt, raw yet verbose, sad and hilarious and weirdly engaging, pieces of writing that you will ever read. If you have a brain and a heart and a pair of eyes, please, I urge you, read these, as well as the other books.
Well, now; what makes Salinger's books special? What is it about these works of literature that so imbues them with unique soul and personality, so able to perfectly bridge the gap between the mundane and the ripely spiritual?
Disillusionment is the core theme, following two main threads. Firstly, an ideal for human relationships: sincere, mutual, trusting, spontaneous, positive, and fundamentally functional. We see this interpersonal approach embodied in classically Salingeresque characters; who are almost always sentimental and needy. The sad reality of our broken world means that this ideal model of relationships struggles, never quite clicks into place, and so in encounters, dark and mundane, with the egoism and pretense that taints social life with 'phoniness', these characters become alienated and cynical. Children feature heavily in Salinger's writings because they can be presented and understood as of an age whereby they haven't yet outgrown naivety and innocence: they much more naturally emulate this ideal.
The second thread through which we encounter disillusionment is harder to pin down: an ideal for all value-laden pursuits that comprise a individual human life, seeking truth and beauty, striving for perfection, expressed most commonly through art and religion. Alongside the wounded childlike cynics mentioned above, Salinger's larger characters are often aesthetes or mystics of some kind; striving to capture, or even merely glimpse, absolute values that they know to exist. However, as with those trying to live in social harmony, those trying to acquaint themselves with perfection are far from indefatigable. Pretense and egoism pervade and spoil these spheres too, clouding the purity of the characters' pursuit, leading to further disenchantment.
Evidence of both these prongs is evident in all of Salinger's notable characters. Holden Caulfield and Buddy Glass, his two most significant narrators, seem to embody a relatively neutral middle-ground between them, Holden veering more toward the former type of disillusionment and Buddy the latter, but ultimately not too burdened by these weights as we rely on them as narrators more to be apt describers of human character, which they are, in ways that do go on anyway to reveal much about these themes. Seymour, as he is presented, seems to me to completely capture the full tragic depth of both prongs. Franny and Zooey, both child-celebrity intellectuals struggling under the weight of their older brothers' ridiculous schemes of philosophical education, have both been dragged by the former into a deep antisociality, and pushed by the latter into a state of angst (which Zooey has come to terms with, and his helping Franny come to terms with it too is the main plot thread of Zooey). Non-Glass family characters bear much of these marks too: just flip through the short stories. Eloise, Selena's brother Franklin, the Chief, Jean de Daumier-Smith, Teddy - in varying states of joy and sorrow, these characters' lives stem from these twin motors that drive Salinger's works.
His strong spiritual themes are present because of religion's capacity to underpin, justify and obligate these kinds of perfection and value that his characters crave; similarly his occasional sardonic references to psychoanalysis as a 'cure-all' for characters' problems shows a faith that rather than having to scientifically or therapeutically restructure our minds we can overcome these forms of alienation to some extent by collectively deciding to be nicer; his frequent use of unusual but fairly mundane social situations likewise demonstrates the all-invasive lack of these perfections in human life and thought. So his overall tone comes across as cynical; we know of truth and beauty and yet it is never quite here, as in reality, the world often does just suck. This disappointment runs deep and J.D. knows it. This is why his work has such an endearing quality to those who stick with it and listen to it: humans are seekers, we feel our existential absurdity and it stings, and this deep-cutting fact has massive implications for our character, behaviour, the way we converse and conduct relationships; and his unmatched eye for minute quirks enable him to capture and draw out these implications in scenes that come across as real with characters who seem neurotic and insecure enough to be like genuine people, just as self-conflicted, just as happy and sad at the same time. The brilliance of Salinger is that he connects the universal wont of humankind - as sketched out above - into the details of unique personality and circumstance. He does so gently but never open-handedly, in a complex but not obtuse manner, and the result is writing that clicks on a fundamental level with what it's like to be a person.
There is secondly a short novella, called Zooey, concerning the attempts of the second-youngest Glass sibling, Zooey, and their mother Bessie, to rouse Franny from some kind of emotional crisis that she's fallen into on the family sofa. He is depicted first bantering at his mother harshly from a bathtub, later neatening up to go to a meeting to discuss a poorish script he's been talked into acting in. Before leaving the apartment, he drops into the lounge, and talks to Franny at length about her predicament, angering and upsetting her considerably with his incisive tactless analysis of why she feels the way she does. After a couple of other fruitless tactics (pretending to be one of her other brothers by disguising his voice over the phone, dredging up many a memory of previous philosophy-induced breakdowns within the enigmatic precocious Glass family, briefly even attempting a vaudeville performance), he finally launches into an inspiring finale about the nature of faith and joy and the objects of these two phenomena, and though he delivers this with a rather blasé academic bent, it does seem to work in fixing his sister's mind.
Summarising a Salinger text is more or less completely pointless. These are two of the most human, most thought-provoking, most honest, rambling yet blunt, raw yet verbose, sad and hilarious and weirdly engaging, pieces of writing that you will ever read. If you have a brain and a heart and a pair of eyes, please, I urge you, read these, as well as the other books.
Well, now; what makes Salinger's books special? What is it about these works of literature that so imbues them with unique soul and personality, so able to perfectly bridge the gap between the mundane and the ripely spiritual?
Disillusionment is the core theme, following two main threads. Firstly, an ideal for human relationships: sincere, mutual, trusting, spontaneous, positive, and fundamentally functional. We see this interpersonal approach embodied in classically Salingeresque characters; who are almost always sentimental and needy. The sad reality of our broken world means that this ideal model of relationships struggles, never quite clicks into place, and so in encounters, dark and mundane, with the egoism and pretense that taints social life with 'phoniness', these characters become alienated and cynical. Children feature heavily in Salinger's writings because they can be presented and understood as of an age whereby they haven't yet outgrown naivety and innocence: they much more naturally emulate this ideal.
The second thread through which we encounter disillusionment is harder to pin down: an ideal for all value-laden pursuits that comprise a individual human life, seeking truth and beauty, striving for perfection, expressed most commonly through art and religion. Alongside the wounded childlike cynics mentioned above, Salinger's larger characters are often aesthetes or mystics of some kind; striving to capture, or even merely glimpse, absolute values that they know to exist. However, as with those trying to live in social harmony, those trying to acquaint themselves with perfection are far from indefatigable. Pretense and egoism pervade and spoil these spheres too, clouding the purity of the characters' pursuit, leading to further disenchantment.
Evidence of both these prongs is evident in all of Salinger's notable characters. Holden Caulfield and Buddy Glass, his two most significant narrators, seem to embody a relatively neutral middle-ground between them, Holden veering more toward the former type of disillusionment and Buddy the latter, but ultimately not too burdened by these weights as we rely on them as narrators more to be apt describers of human character, which they are, in ways that do go on anyway to reveal much about these themes. Seymour, as he is presented, seems to me to completely capture the full tragic depth of both prongs. Franny and Zooey, both child-celebrity intellectuals struggling under the weight of their older brothers' ridiculous schemes of philosophical education, have both been dragged by the former into a deep antisociality, and pushed by the latter into a state of angst (which Zooey has come to terms with, and his helping Franny come to terms with it too is the main plot thread of Zooey). Non-Glass family characters bear much of these marks too: just flip through the short stories. Eloise, Selena's brother Franklin, the Chief, Jean de Daumier-Smith, Teddy - in varying states of joy and sorrow, these characters' lives stem from these twin motors that drive Salinger's works.
His strong spiritual themes are present because of religion's capacity to underpin, justify and obligate these kinds of perfection and value that his characters crave; similarly his occasional sardonic references to psychoanalysis as a 'cure-all' for characters' problems shows a faith that rather than having to scientifically or therapeutically restructure our minds we can overcome these forms of alienation to some extent by collectively deciding to be nicer; his frequent use of unusual but fairly mundane social situations likewise demonstrates the all-invasive lack of these perfections in human life and thought. So his overall tone comes across as cynical; we know of truth and beauty and yet it is never quite here, as in reality, the world often does just suck. This disappointment runs deep and J.D. knows it. This is why his work has such an endearing quality to those who stick with it and listen to it: humans are seekers, we feel our existential absurdity and it stings, and this deep-cutting fact has massive implications for our character, behaviour, the way we converse and conduct relationships; and his unmatched eye for minute quirks enable him to capture and draw out these implications in scenes that come across as real with characters who seem neurotic and insecure enough to be like genuine people, just as self-conflicted, just as happy and sad at the same time. The brilliance of Salinger is that he connects the universal wont of humankind - as sketched out above - into the details of unique personality and circumstance. He does so gently but never open-handedly, in a complex but not obtuse manner, and the result is writing that clicks on a fundamental level with what it's like to be a person.
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