Franny and Zooey in Never too Late to Read Classics

Nov 22, 2011 Yair Ben-Zvi rated it it was amazing

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I forget what book this referenced, maybe Elie Wiesel's "Night", but afterI finished Salinger's "Franny and Zooey" I couldn't help but think of this blurb: "A slim volume of devastating power,". And that's exactly what Salinger's book was, maybe not in content but definitely in style. It lures you in with a seductive readability and even a surface level simplicity. But once it has you, the book springs open like a literary trap door, dropping you into an experience, a portion of your thoughts, y I forget what book this referenced, maybe Elie Wiesel's "Night", but afterI finished Salinger's "Franny and Zooey" I couldn't help but think of this blurb: "A slim volume of devastating power,". And that's exactly what Salinger's book was, maybe not in content but definitely in style. It lures you in with a seductive readability and even a surface level simplicity. But once it has you, the book springs open like a literary trap door, dropping you into an experience, a portion of your thoughts, you didn't know you had to visit, to live in.

Talking it over with a friend as I sped back from Charles Bukowski's grave (a frequent site of pilgrimage for me on off days) he and I discussed how Salinger's writing struck that happy (and rare medium) between the minimalism of Hemingway and the baroque styling of "over-writers" like Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer or Stephen Frye. He tells a definite story without you having to guess at what he's talking around, but he never gives you more than you can handle and nothing superfluous comes up as random and intentioned strokes of the author's ego. Everything there is needed and placed beautifully. However, unlike a Bellow whose style is too manicured, trained, lacking in flourish and passion, Salinger invests in each of his characters and scenes more than the requisite amount of emotion and pathos. The characters and their voices are where this is most evident. Franny, Zooey, Lane, Bessie, all the characters here speak like characters in a novel, but not obnoxiously or pretentiously so. Concomitantly, they sound real, like real people with real affectations of speech and mannerism could and do sound in day to day life, but not to the point that the artifice disappears and your left with tap-water flat characters to hear recite cardboard exposition to each other. Again, Salinger strikes that golden mean and gives us a brash but controlled novel of "slim and devastating power".

Read this book. It's easily on par with "Catcher in the Rye" which I loved, and contains the usual Salinger tropes of iconoclasm, intellectual authenticity in the face of (American) cultural banality, and all with an inimitable voice that bespeaks a massive intellect and a sharp eye for what does and does not define the most precise and relevant of written story telling. ...more

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May 16, 2020 Honey rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020, favorites, studied

I read this book for the Amy Hungerford English class through Yale. I really enjoyed it. Zooey drives me crazy and seem abusive but I get what Salinger was trying to do with his character. I had a hard time getting past his utter disrespect for his mother. I also wondered if there some kind of specific mental health issue in the family. The obsession with religion seemed a symptom of bipolar disorder and clearly suicide runs in the family.
Some favorite quotes:

"I keep a good neurotics calendar." ...more

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