Franny and Zooey in Classics Without All the Class

Jul 28, 2020 James rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, short-stories, physically-owned

No one-trick pony, that Salinger; instead, a many-illusion stallion. Watch him go, juggling these twin narratives that, while short and punchy ("skimpy-looking book," he calls it in the dedication), prove no less spectacular in showing the awesome depth of characters’ entire inner universes, parceling out neurotic comedy and warm/cold honesty in increasing measure. Franny and Zooey follows the two titular siblings, two “freak” peas in the pond, precocity out the wazoo, who’ve grown up in a kind No one-trick pony, that Salinger; instead, a many-illusion stallion. Watch him go, juggling these twin narratives that, while short and punchy ("skimpy-looking book," he calls it in the dedication), prove no less spectacular in showing the awesome depth of characters’ entire inner universes, parceling out neurotic comedy and warm/cold honesty in increasing measure. Franny and Zooey follows the two titular siblings, two “freak” peas in the pond, precocity out the wazoo, who’ve grown up in a kind of glass house alongside other Glass siblings as part of a radio group act, helicopter-parented by Mrs. Glass, and thus since been out of existential sorts. As a result, i.e., of this super-angst, they’re super-argumentative, which Salinger makes downright transfixing by the unique voices, as well as highly specific actions, with which he characterises them, imbues them with frantic life. In the bathroom mirror, Zooey “share[s] his amusement” with his reflection at something his mom said. Franny cannot tear her eyes away from the frogs’ legs her boyfriend’s wolfing down. Mrs. Glass expresses herself through a dictionary’s worth of sighs whose meaning depends on pitch, volume, immediate context. And they all speak in italics for syllabic emphasis like “charitable” and “manuscipt” that I can see being irritating for some, yet much the opposite for me: hilarious. This, too, is to say nothing of the frequently if weirdly spellbinding wordsmithing Salinger does willy-nilly and amazingly like Franny’s “self-imposed sentence of unadulterated good-listenership” and Mrs. Glass’ “fan-club appreciation” for Zooey, the latter mirroring my own overwhelming same for Salinger. Yet he grounds everything, all this prestidigitation, in genuine consideration of the questions of literature, celebrity, and spirituality, and how they complicate for both sister and brother those larger ones of family and especially identity, answered with surprising care. Decidedly more first- than tenth-rate. ...more

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