The Books: “Franny and Zooey” (J.D. Salinger)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

There’s a reason why Salinger fans tend to annoy non-Salinger fans. Because we tend to get evangelical, passionate – and (to the non-Salinger eyes) “melodramatic”. We say things like, “This book changed how I looked at life.” I think the non-Salinger fans do us a great disservice by dismissing our comments out of hand. Not because we’re right and they’re wrong, but because I think it’s always interesting to hear from someone else about a book that made a great impact on the person. Whether or not it had a great impact on me doesn’t matter because, uhm, I have boundaries between me and my fellow man – so I know when they say a book that I didn’t like changed their lives – I don’t take it personally just because it didn’t change MY life. Because I know that that person is speaking from his or her experience – not mine. I will never understand the defensiveness in response to difference of opinion about purely subjective things. I don’t get pissy and defensive when I hear someone going on and on about something that didn’t do it for me. If I’m interested in that person, and if that person is articulate, well then – please – go on forever about why a certain book changed your life. I find such conversations fascinating. But it’s not often a two-way street, which is why I’ve gotten such pissy defensive responses to Bloomsday here on the blog because some people have no boundaries – and so they take it PERSONALLY that I am going “on and on” about something they do not care about. I get the pissiness to some degree, but the defensiveness I will NEVER get. What are you defending yourself against? One woman’s personal opinion? So weird. I don’t operate like that, so I just don’t understand it. This is a different phenomenon, by the way, than the annoying people who act like you “should” like something, just because it’s a classic, or Harold Bloom liked it, whatever. I certainly can make up my own mind about things, and I do.

So now, on to Salinger: Because I usually have to with Salinger and other authors tremendously important to me, I have to talk about my life first. The book is entwined inextricably with my life, and where and when I was at when I read it. I loved Catcher in the Rye from the moment I first read it in high school. I read Franny and Zooey some time later, and have to admit it didn’t make much of an impression on me. I missed the PLOT in Catcher – Franny and Zooey was just all talk talk talk and I didn’t quite know what they were going on about. I was 17 or 18 when I read it. Cue forward to my mid to late 20s. I was living in Chicago, and doing pretty well. I was independent, flagrantly single but with one main flame, and acting in shows all the time. Nothing was “missing” except for, possibly, that dream-mate I was looking for. Still am. I did find that dream-mate, by the way, but it didn’t work out, which changed everything. It was the biggest possible bump in the road, wrench in the works, whatever. To say I was “stopped” by that heartache is to under-state it completely. For a good 4 or 5 months, I didn’t even know which end was up. I always put the date in the front of books I buy – not the date I read it, but the date I buy it. It’s a habit. I look at the date in the front of my copy of Franny and Zooey – March 95 – and while that won’t mean anything to anyone else, to me it calls up an entire time, place, atmosphere, mindset … a certain quick trip to snowy Ohio, a panicky call to Mitchell (his calm firm voice, “Come home. Don’t sign anything. Just come home and sleep on it.”), a crazy night at a ridiculous pub called The Gingerman with M., my main flame – which put us on hiatus for a good 4 months because I decided never to speak to him again (until, of course, I did speak to him again) … a show I was doing, an audition I had that seemed like it would lead somewhere – and then the fucking nightmare I was still experiencing of the aftermath of the bust-up with dream-mate. That is what March 95 was to me. So in the middle of that, I bought Franny and Zooey, which, like I mentioned, I had read, but not really remembered – not like I remembered parts of Catcher word for word. I was sitting in a coffee shop I loved on Irving Park and Ravenswood. It was a freezing cold March Chicago day. And I read Franny and Zooey in one sitting. I didn’t sit down to have some epiphany or moment of truth. I’m sure I wouldn’t have sat down at all with the book if I had guessed what would come. Obviously I was ripe for some upheaval (or, I should say, MORE upheaval). I wasn’t flat-lining until Franny and Zooey came along. Please. I’m not that shallow. I had a lot of struggles and thoughts and unrealized things percolating in me … not sure what to do with all of it … hoping it would “all work out” … and as I read Franny and Zooey – a 200 page book – everything shifted. I guess what happened was: that everything got urgent, as opposed to me passively assuming that “things would work out”. It was urgent. it didn’t happen immediately – the book starts slowly, as you know if you’ve read it … and it’s talky, very philosophical and intellectual … funny, too … but then in the last 10 pages … it’s like the truth of life, in all its fear and longing and mess and being stuck-edness – is revealed … in the words of Zooey to his sister … and you are confronted with yourself, finally. That there is nothing to do but what you were born to do.

And let’s not forget: all of the Glass children, of which Franny and Zooey are the youngest two, are extraordinary people, verging on freakiness. I mean, we’re all special, kumbaya, but there are those who are destined for other things … the stars, the prodigies, the ones who are beyond other people – the extraordinary ones. This is not a popular thing to talk about these days, when every kid gets a trophy, whether he comes in first or last … but let’s not quibble about that. The Glass children are freaks – Zooey says that himself, he has figured it out – Franny is still struggling, with being conventional, with trying to fit into some round hole set up for her by society … Meanwhile, the other siblings – Seymour was a poet and a Buddhist who committed suicide. They have still not dismantled his room. Walt was killed in WWII. Buddy is the caretaker, the one who keeps them all together … they keep wanting to call Buddy during Franny’s nervous breakdown because he will know what to say … and then there’s Boo Boo … (all of these folks show up in all of Salinger’s other stories, they’re like old friends) – who doesn’t seem quite as “out there” as her siblings. In a funny way, she – in her normal wife and mother mode – is the black sheep of the family. BUT I DIGRESS. These are not normal people, who “fit in”, and I speak from experience – we live in a society that puts a high premium on “fitting in” – and so either you wrestle with that openly, and try to find your own way of getting through life (while, of course, obeying the laws) – or you try to fit yourself into a round hole, and live a life of misery and frustration. When I read Franny and Zooey in that cafe on that cold day, I wasn’t trying to fit into a round hole. I was already a weirdo, just in terms of what my life looked like – compared to the majority. I was in my late 20s. I was single. I was not on a marriage track. I was an actress. I was free of obligations. I didn’t own much. I was poor. And that didn’t worry me too terribly. But society is a strong thing, and expectations live IN you – they are not just external forces … so it is (and still is) a constant struggle. To be true to myself … and to always ask myself, “Am I living my best life right now? And if I’m not – what can I do to change?” Franny and Zooey didn’t just make me ask that question – it caused the question to be screamed into my ear at top volume. Something needed to change. I needed to take the wheel. But how? What needed to be done? In March of 95, I was ensconced in Chicago. I was happier in Chicago than I had been in any other city I lived in, and I had lived in a bunch. I had great friends, a wonderful guy to hang out with (even though he wasn’t my dream-mate), and projects I believed in. Chicago was my home. But things started shifting so drastically after reading Franny and Zooey that I moved to New York a mere 5 months later. I didn’t even see it coming. I didn’t WANT to leave, it killed me to leave … but I felt I HAD to leave. Looking back on it, I have mixed feelings … but at the time, it was imperative. Zooey was talking to ME, and to me alone, when he said:

“Somewhere along the line – in one damn incarnation or another, if you like – you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You’re stuck with it now. You can’t just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to – be God’s actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to – there’s nothing wrong in trying.” There was a slight pause. “You’d better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around.”

That passage seared right through me, a blazing light. I didn’t even want to deal with the implications because I just knew – in a flash – that it would mean great change and upheaval. I could feel it. I knew I would move. I didn’t know when, but I knew it would be soon, because of those “goddam sands” running out on me. I could actually feel the goddam sands – and it seems to me that a part of the human condition is to rarely have a palpable sense of our own mortality. There’s always time for that “later”. When I retire, when the kids go to college, whatever … But there is no guarantee about that kind of long-term plan. We could die at any moment. No time like the present.

William James wrote:

To change your life: Start immediately; do it flamboyantly; no exceptions.

Scary. That’s the state that Franny and Zooey put me into. I actually haven’t read it all the way through since … Maybe I’m afraid that I’ll have the same response?? Maybe I need to read it again.

Bare bones of story: Franny and Zooey are college-age kids, both of them are actors. Franny, after a date with her Yalie boyfriend Lane, has what can be termed as a nervous breakdown – she moves home and lies on the couch. She says a ‘Jesus prayer’ to herself, over and over – she can’t stop … And part of her crisis has to do with whether or not she will actually commit to being an actress. So much of acting and theatre life is CRAP. Yes, that’s true. But a Salinger point of view is: yes. Most people are assholes, or phonies. But try to get along with them the best you can. There is such a thing as being too critical. Franny is judgmental and a snot about campus life and college students. She finds it all a sham. Zooey tries to talk to her about it. Salinger knows the danger of seeing all of life, or an entire group of people, as a sham. Zooey gets quite confrontational with her about it, eventually – but he lets her blow off steam, before weighing in with his opinion. You know those people who think everyone sucks but them? Whose main complaint of life seems to be: “Why on earth doesn’t everyone on the planet have the common sense and good judgment that I have?” Now that’s fine to blow off steam a bit, if you want … but to have that be your default position? Seriously, you need to look at how judgmental you are, and what you are afraid of, and what you are resisting. If you are in a state where you relish your own rightness 9 times out of 10 – well, first of all, I need to tell you even if I haven’t met you: You are a big fucking bore. Second of all, you need to look at your behavior and see where it might be coming from. Franny is coming close to being a terminal case – and Zooey senses that danger. Instead of having a passing annoyance at her fellow man and his pretensions and phoniness – it is becoming her default position. And Zooey loves her too much to let that happen. Franny is a rigid person, in her way – very much like myself, I might add … passionate people are often extremely rigid as well, which confuses anyone who doesn’t experience life that way. How can someone so passionate also be so rigid?? I should give seminars. Zooey, her brother, in lieu of Seymour, their absent brother, tries to talk her off the cliff. She lies on the couch, praying. She can’t stop. It has become a compulsion. If she takes her concentration off the “Jesus prayer” for too long, she starts to unravel. Zooey, using all the philosophy he has as her brother, and also as a member of this weirdo family, tries to talk to her about the prayer – and doesn’t tell her to stop doing it – but, like in the excerpt above – tries to make her put it to use. Be God’s actress if you want to … there’s no reason you can’t combine the two. Don’t be so rigid. Life isn’t either/or.

One more quote, and then I’ll get to the excerpt:

Great acting teacher Stella Adler said once:

It isn’t that important to know who you are. It is important to know what you do, and then do it like Hercules.

When the story opens, Franny is nervous, twitchy and self-conscious – because she is desperately trying to figure out who she is. Is she conventional girlfriend of Lane? Is she an actress? Artist? Who is she?? Zooey, in his 40 page long conversation with his sister, tries to get her to shift her thinking away from who she is towards what she does … which is ACT, for God’s sake. If you have a gift, then you must use it. Do it like Hercules.

Here’s an excerpt.

This is Franny describing to Zooey how the plague of self-righteousness and loathing of everyone took over her entire mind and how awful it was.

Oh, and it’s also important to keep in mind: Salinger has great compassion for Franny’s position. After all, it is his position. This is not about Zooey being right, and Franny being annoying and childish and snotty. She’s got valid points. It’s just: do you want to live like that? How does one negotiate the world – when one is sensitive, rigid, passionate? How does one live??

And also let’s not forget: Seymour committed suicide. The poet-philosopher, the leader of them all. They still look to him for help, advice, escape … If he couldn’t hack it – he who was greater and smarter than all of them – then what chance do they have? Seymour is really a character in this story, in his absence.

EXCERPT FROM Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

“I want to ask you something, Franny,” he said abruptly. He turned back to the writing-table surface again, frowned, and gave the snowman a shake. “What do you think you’re doing with the Jesus Prayer?” he asked. “This is what I was trying to get at last night. Before you told me to go chase myself. You talk about piling up treasure – money, property, culture, knowledge, and so on and so on. In going ahead with the Jesus Prayer – just let me finish, now, please – in going ahead with the Jesus Prayer, aren’t you trying to lay up some kind of treasure? Something that’s every goddam bit as negotiable as all those other, more material things? Or does the fact that it’s a prayer make all the difference? I mean by that, is there all the difference in the world, for you, in which side somebody lays up his treasure – this side, or the other? The one where thieves can’t break in, et cetera? Is that what makes the difference? Wait a second, now – just wait’ll I’m finished, please.” He sat for a few seconds watching the little blizzard in the glass sphere. Then: “There’s something about the way you’re going at this prayer that gives me the willies, if you want to know the truth. You think I’m out to stop you from saying it. I don’t know whether I am or not – that’s a goddam debatable point – but I would like you to clear up for me just what the hell your motives are for saying it.” He hesitated, but not long enough to give Franny a chance to cut in on him. “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.”

Franny said, as icily as she could with a faint tremor in her voice, “May I interrupt now, Zooey?”

Zooey let go the snowman and picked up a pencil to play with. “Yes. yes. Interrupt,” he said.

“I know all you’re saying. You’re not telling me one thing I haven’t thought of by myself. You’re saying I want something from the Jesus Prayer – which makes me just as acquisitive, in your word, really, as somebody who wants a sable coat, or to be famous, or to be dripping with some kind of crazy prestige. I know all that! My gosh, what kind of imbecile do you think I am?” The tremor in her voice amounted now almost to an impediment.

“All right, take it easy, take it easy.”

“I can’t take it easy! You make me so mad! What do you think I’m doing here in this crazy room – losing weight like mad, worrying Bessie and Les absolutely silly, upsetting the house, and everything? Don’t you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That’s exactly what’s bothering me so. Just because I’m choosy about what I want – in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things – doesn’t mean I’m not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else. If anything, I’m more so! I don’t need the famous Zachary Glass to tell me that!” Here there was a marked break in her voice, and she began to be very attentive to Bloomberg again. Tears, presumably, were imminent, if not already on the way.

Over at the writing table, Zooey, pressing down heavily with his pencil, was filling in the “o”s on the advertisement of a small blotter. He kept this up for a little interval, then flipped the pencil toward the inkwell. He picked up his cigar from the lip of the copper ashtray where he had placed it. It was now only about two inches in length but was still burning. He took a deep drag on it, as if it were a kind of respirator in an otherwise oxygenless world. Then, almost forcibly, he looked over at Franny again. “Do you want me to try to get Buddy on the phone for you tonight?” he asked. “I think you should talk to somebody – I’m no damn good for this.” He waited, looking at her steadily. “Franny. What about it?”

Franny’s head was bowed. She appeared to be searching for fleas in Bloomberg’s coat, her fingers very busy indeed turning back tufts of fur. She was in fact crying now, but in a very local sort of way, as it were; there were tears but no sounds. Zooey watched her for a full minute or so, then said, not precisely kindly, but without importuning, “Franny. What about it? Shall I try to get Buddy on the phone?”

She shook her head, without raising it. She went on searching for fleas. Then, after an interval, she did reply to Zooey’s question, but not very audibly.

“What?” Zooey asked.

Franny repeated her statement. “I want to talk to Seymour,” she said.