Scan barcode
raaaaaaaach's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
princessgot's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jcoryv's review against another edition
5.0
The Catcher in the Rye was the first book I read that I had a visceral response too, and is still one of my favorite books... I've probably read it a dozen times, and I rarely re-read books. I know I read Franny and Zooey years ago too, but I don't recall how I felt about it at the time. Though after just finishing it for the second time, I feel this is the one I should've read a dozen times. Simply amazing writing, and lots to think about.
jessiedev's review against another edition
5.0
if in talking to someone i find they haven't read this, i lend it to them immediately. i'm shocked i still have my original copy.
if there is a concept to be consumed with, one to distract and remove you from everyday life, the idea of praying constantly, formlessly, without aim or directive, along with each breath... that's a good one. its a good one.
if there is a concept to be consumed with, one to distract and remove you from everyday life, the idea of praying constantly, formlessly, without aim or directive, along with each breath... that's a good one. its a good one.
mozbolt's review against another edition
5.0
New addition to favorite book list! As someone undergoing an existential crisis, this book was super cathartic and relieving. Wonderful characters, dialogue, and I love how Salinger uses lists in his descriptions of things like the medicine cabinet to create a setting that does so much for character development. I’m definitely going to be reading more of his writing because damn, I’m here for it.
dschuettinger's review against another edition
3.0
It saddens me that these two short works were the planned beginnings of a series of stories surrounding the Glass family. You can almost forgive the missed opportunities at turning these two dimensional characters into something more robust. Reading the subtle hints at back story, I felt let down that further development wasn't given to certain arcs. Why did eldest brother Seymour kill himself? What was the story surrounding the radio appearances of the Glass children? Why do Franny and Zooey blame their older brothers for "making them freaks"? It reads like Salinger is using these two characters to have a existential and theological debate with himself, and it comes off at times as negligently self indulgent. Which is not to say I disliked the book. It just seems like it would have been a great jumping off point for a rich tapestry that Salinger never bothered to finish. Perhaps some answers lie in "Raise High the Roof Beam..." We'll see.
katebirdie's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
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 [b:The Upanishads|1578131|The Upanishads|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388194775l/1578131._SY75_.jpg|162727]). 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, [b:The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way|29799|The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388490638l/29799._SX50_.jpg|30219], 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.
[b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398034300l/5107._SY75_.jpg|3036731] 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 [b:Nine Stories|4009|Nine Stories|J.D. Salinger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554892563l/4009._SY75_.jpg|1839377]), 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 [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671._SY75_.jpg|245494].
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 [b:The Upanishads|1578131|The Upanishads|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388194775l/1578131._SY75_.jpg|162727]). 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, [b:The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way|29799|The Way of a Pilgrim and the Pilgrim Continues His Way|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388490638l/29799._SX50_.jpg|30219], 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.
[b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398034300l/5107._SY75_.jpg|3036731] 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 [b:Nine Stories|4009|Nine Stories|J.D. Salinger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554892563l/4009._SY75_.jpg|1839377]), 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 [b:The Catcher in the Rye|5107|The Catcher in the Rye|J.D. Salinger|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398034300l/5107._SY75_.jpg|3036731]. 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 [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671._SY75_.jpg|245494].
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.