fragile as glass

I will admit it took me until the last forty pages or so to really get into this book, to get to a place where I felt I was genuinely connected to and invested in the characters and could see how all of the seemingly meaningless dialogue that came before had been functioning to create a painfully beautiful picture of the relationship between a brother and sister with the same peculiar drive for greatness. My main takeaway from reading this lesser known work of Salinger's is that he really likes to utilize dialogue to flesh out and convey the inner desires and motives of his characters. Between what they say and how they move, consciously or unconsciously, reading this book felt like looking through a window at the characters, observing their movements and word choices in attempts to understand what they seem unable to directly say. Knowing that this book was originally published as two separate short stories, one titled "Franny" and the other "Zooey," made this read even more interesting for me. Upon first glance, these characters and stories didn't feel to me like they fit together. First you see Franny Glass operating within what looks like a terrible relationship she should get the hell out of, painfully trying to express how important a religious aspect called the "Jesus prayer" is to her before fainting. Then you see Zooey Glass in all his glory, calling his own mother names, painfully self-aware and possibly full of self-loathing for his overly righteous and arrogant attitude towards what seems to be every person and subject that portrays even the slightest of flaws. These two characters - brother and sister - come together in their childhood home, Franny in a physically low state, Zooey in a frenzy of neverending chatter revolving around the aforementioned Jesus prayer. It is this prayer, idolized by Franny and scorned upon by Zooey, who admits to having once participated in it himself, that makes this book much more religious and profound than I expected. I definitely have a lot of unanswered questions regarding all of the theological topics and opinions brought up in this novel, but I appreciate being able to ruminate on them nonetheless. For, overall, it brilliantly displays the struggle of two young adults who endured childhoods in the spotlight of a family radio show, living with the aftermath of the high expectations they seem to have set upon their own shoulders, constantly in a state of pushing away the very people trying to get closer. It's the book's ending, where Zooey pretends to be one of their elder, potentially wiser, brothers on the phone who wants to talk to Franny, that has contributed the most to the lasting impression this story has had on me. Maybe it's the fact that he was selfless enough to really think about what his younger sister needed after emotionally taxing her with his harsh words. Or maybe it was the imaginative quality of his devised plan to masquerade as someone else. But I think it was the fact that it took a conversation over the phone, in the aftermath of the chaos that ensued when they tried to engage in conversation whilst in the same room, that really impacted me with its subtle, almost symbolic, certainly bittersweet beauty. Perhaps it reveals how difficult communication actually is, especially when both members of a party are struggling to make sense of the complications of their own identities and complex ways of thinking. But it's these siblings' somewhat shaky yet powerful bond of family, matched loves for acting and the stage, and a mutual belief that they've been made into "freaks," that all stick with me as well. Discussing this thought-provoking text with the members of my beloved book club for the past three or so months has allowed me to think more deeply about this text than I ever could've on my own. Ruminating on exactly what the "Fat Lady" both Franny and Zooey pictured during their childhood acting days was an aspect of the plot I was confused about on my own. But talking with my group members about how she could symbolize a plethora of things, such as Christ himself and how artists produce their art for the least of these as well as the more desirable audience members, or even the abstract concept that Franny really can constantly be saying the Jesus Prayer if she views her life and her acting as a form of prayer.
​I think this is a very human as well as thought provoking book - I recommend it to everyone. :)


​
Some of my favorite quotes from Franny and Zooey:

"[h]e 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."

"Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books. Tall cases lined three walls of the room, filled to and beyond capacity."

“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”

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

“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.”

---