And so ends my reading of J.D. Salinger. The man wrote one very noteworthy and laudable book, Catcher in the Rye, and a lot of other stuff that I didn't like at all. Franny and Zooey manages to be better than the rest of the crap, but not by so much as to be memorable in any way. The short story Franny was alright- college student Franny shows up at her boyfriend's college for a weekend and they mostly bicker, but they did manage to stumble into a few poignant thoughts in all the fighting. The next story, Zooey, started off pretty terribly with a lot of bickering that really went nowhere. But then Franny from the first story shows up, and the story picks up a bit- Zooey and Franny argue a bit about religion, and Zooey just absolutely rips into Christianity. It's probably the most memorable part of the whole book, but it ends fairly quickly and the story wraps up in a boring way. Oh well. So long, J.D.
Toss up! Bigger J.D. bust - Salinger or Drew?
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I'm right there with you. Loved Catcher, went about 1.5 for 9 on "Nine Stories," couldn't muster up enough fecal matter to give a shit about Carpenters/Seymour, and was only a fan of Franny and Zooey for the twenty pages that were Franny and then the final ten pages or so of Zooey.
Follow-up thought on Franny. I thought the character was actually a pretty nice female counterpart for Holden Caulfield. Both kick their respective stories off in some sort of phony-laden academic environment, and both are unsettled and disturbed enough to just flee the fuck out of there one weekend. (Both also lost a brother in their youth. Salinger must have lost a brother in his youth, right?) Anyway, while Holden gets cynical and bitter, Franny just sort of feels faint and weak and falls into a depression. This screams "gender stereotypes of the 1950s" to me, but whatever - in hindsight, maybe Franny is the more likable character than Holden just for not being a whiny asshole. Shit - suddenly I'm craving a re-read. I didn't recall the Christianity thing at all, and I also remember really loving whatever it was Zooey said to Franny at the end of his self-titled tale. (But not yet. Not yet.)
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