PAW 14 – Franny and Zooey (2120) by J. D. Salinger

Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger; Penguin Paperback 2120; 1968 edition.

Franny and Zooey is a very odd sort of a book. It’s a work of very uneven and unmixed parts — some of which are very good, a couple of which are very bad, but all of which have to be taken together. Definitely overshadowed by the masterwork The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey lacks thrust and is constantly self-conscious, almost self-destructive. The most bizarre and noticeable flaw of the book is Salinger’s complete and mystifying lack of ability to write prose. It’s completely unaccountable that an author who writes slick and brilliant dialogue is positively ham-fisted when it comes to describing something. Here are two of the worst offenders in the book, the first describes a restaurant, Sickler’s:

Sickler’s was a restaurant where a student and his date either both ordered salad or, usually, neither of them did, because of the garlic seasoning.

This sentence is a mess of contradictions that leaves you with absolutely no sense of the restaurant, it’s atmosphere, or even how, logically, two people can not usually order a salad — or even why any of this needs explaining. Try this next one on for size:

This was the first time in almost seven years that Zooey had, in the ready made dramatic idiom ‘set foot’ in Seymour’s and Buddy’s old room. Discounting a totally negligible incident a couple of years earlier, when he had methodically dragged the apartment for a mislaid or ‘stolen’ tennis-racket press.

For a start, I’m not convinced that ‘set foot’ actually is an idiom, and second, why would you draw attention to it? And what business does that second sentence have being in any book anywhere? If it was so negligible, why bring it up? And isn’t that descriptor at odds with the adjective ‘methodically’? What is needed here is a confident editor to take a red pencil and strike out every word in that paragraph except ‘This was the first time in almost seven years that Zooey had set foot in Seymour’s and Buddy’s room.’

Perhaps one of the reasons that the prose is so clumsy is because very little happens in the stories. What they are both about are conversations — scintillating, fascinating, vastly intelligent conversations, relayed in a Socratic fashion, first between Franny and Lane, the Zooey and Bessie, and then Franny and Zooey. It involves the Glass family, who are clearly an inspiration for Wes Anderson’s ‘Royal Tannenbaums’, a family of famous academic overachiever ingenues whose heyday has passed and are now trying to find meaning for their lives. The dialogue is incredible in what it enables to communicate without saying, revealing far more than the characters are aware that they are telling to each other. It’s rich and colourful, and also brings to mind David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest for pure luxuriousness of readability and invention. And this betrays the fact of why Catcher in the Rye is so enduring while the descriptive passages in the rest of Salinger are so clunky — Catcher is written in first person.

If this was a longer book I wouldn’t recommend it, but at a scant 157 pages, it’s a worthwhile weekend diversion.

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