Franny and Zooey

by J.D. Salinger

“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.”

and if you don’t know it yet, you’re beginning to give off a little stink of piousness. God damn it, there isn’t any prayer in any religion in the world that justifies piousness.

These other people you’ve been ranting about are something else again. This Professor Tupper. And those other two goons you were telling me about last night—Manlius, and the other one. I’ve had them by the dozens, and so has everybody else, and I agree they’re not harmless. They’re lethal as hell, as a matter of fact. God almighty. They make everything they touch turn absolutely academic and useless. Or—worse—cultish. To my mind, they’re mostly to blame for the mob of ignorant oafs with diplomas that are turned loose on the country every June.”

“The part that stumps me, really stumps me, is that I can’t see why anybody—unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim—would even want to say the prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He’s only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that’s all! Who isn’t he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls—but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody.

But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam ‘unskilled laughter’ coming from the fifth row. And that’s right, that’s right—God knows it’s depressing. I’m not saying it isn’t. But that’s none of your business, really. That’s none of your business, Franny. An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s. You have no right to think about those things, I swear to you.