Franny and Zooey

by J.D. Salinger

Lane himself lit a cigarette as the train pulled in. Then, like so many people, who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very probational pass to meet trains, he tried to empty his face of all expression that might quite simply, perhaps even beautifully, reveal how he felt about the arriving person.

‘If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.

Everything everybody does is so – I don’t know – not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and – sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.’

‘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.

Dr Suzuki says somewhere that to be in a state of pure consciousness – satori – is to be with God before he said, Let there be light.

In any case, for what little it’s worth, please count on my affection and support, at whatever distance.

‘You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes,’

‘I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.’

We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound. At least I do.

‘I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while – just once in a while – there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge. You hardly ever even hear the word “wisdom” mentioned!

‘As a matter of simple logic, there’s no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who’s greedy for material treasure – or even intellectual treasure – and the man who’s greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure’s treasure, God damn it, and it seems to me that ninety per cent of all the world-hating saints in history were just as acquisitive and unattractive, basically, as the rest of us are.’

‘God damn it,’ he said, ‘there are nice things in the world – and I mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos.’

I had one professor when I was in college – just one, I’ll grant you, but he was a big, big one – who just doesn’t fit in with anything you’ve been talking about. He wasn’t Epictetus. But he was no egomaniac, he was no faculty charm boy. He was a great and modest scholar. And what’s more, I don’t think I ever heard him say anything, either in or out of a classroom, that didn’t seem to me to have a little bit of real wisdom in it – and sometimes a lot of it. What’ll happen to him when you start your revolution?

‘But what I don’t like – and what I don’t think either Seymour or Buddy would like, either, as a matter of fact – is the way you talk about all these people. I mean you don’t just despise what they represent – you despise them. It’s too damn personal, Franny.

I mean if you’re able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can’t you use the same energy to stay well and busy?

There’d be some excuse for it if you were either a very simple person, like the pilgrim, or a very goddam desperate person – but you’re not simple, buddy, and you’re not that damned desperate.’

You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either.

If a worshipper should make a mistake, do you not think God will know his intent?’

The handpiece lay detached from its catch, waiting for Franny. It looked almost as dependent as a human being for some acknowledgment of its existence.

An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.