You have to be in a certain state of mind for Salinger to hit you. Otherwise, the blows bounce off and you end thinking that he’s “Positive Thinking for the upper middle classes, as Double Your Energy and Live Without Fatigue for Sarah Lawrence girls.”
If you are in that state of mind, in which Franny’s attacks against the posers and phonies are simply better enunciated versions of your internal monologue, then Salinger doesn’t need justifying. The cynic in me just resonates with
It isn’t just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness’ sake. I mean if he were a girl–somebody in my dorm, for example–he’d have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through Wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It’s everybody, I mean. 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.
While the core essence of her complaint is a purity test of hypocritical proportions, if it vibes, it vibes. But even if it doesn’t, I think there’s still much to appreciate about Franny and Zooey.
While published as a collective unit today, Franny and Zooey were originally published individually, two years apart. And while the characters are nominally consistent between the two, the styles could not be more different. Franny is more precise and controlled. There is care placed in making the characters feel grounded. Take a couple of delicate lines placed as we meet our central characters, Lane and Franny. Lane is waiting for Franny to arrive on the train and pulls out a letter to read it.
The letter was written–typewritten–on pale-blue notepaper. It had a handled, unfresh look, as if it had been taken out of its envelope and read several times before.
We get to read the letter that Franny has written Lane. And later, when Franny arrives, she says,
“You look almost frozen, you poor man. Why didn’t you wait inside? Did you get my letter?”
“Which letter?” Lane said, pick up her suitcase. It was navy blue with white leather binding, like half a dozen other suitcases that had just been carried off the train.
“You didn’t get it? I mail it Wednesday. Oh, God! I even took it down to the post-“
“Oh, that one. Yes. This all the bags you brought? What’s the book?”
Salinger has left much for us to collect. First, there are the high level, big picture items that the letter [and I have omitted] plainly contains. The stuff that is important for understanding the discussion that will happen later on. But then there is the discrepancy between what Lane tells Franny about the letter and his actual behavior. While Lane treats the matter of the letter as an offhand issue, “Oh, that one.”, the letter clearly occupies more mental space than he lets on to Franny, given that it has been read several times. There’s some depth to these characters and the way that we read their relationship changes given this additional understanding. We appreciate this aspect even more when Franny later, near the end of the book, reveals that she “had to strain to write it.” Neither of these characters are revealing everything they have to the reader or even each other on first blush. Lane would like to seem the aloof character, especially to others - Franny would like to seem attached, seemingly for herself. It would have been simple of Salinger to tell us these tidbits with a couple simple adjectives. But it gives much more interpretable depth to instead show them to us through these subtle interactions.
But even tucked within these lines, is the detail of Franny’s suitcase, which resembles all of the other suitcases. Franny is likely, very similar to the people she criticized, which might play into the self hatred she displays. Of course, there is no authoritative way to interpret these additional details. Some have speculated that Franny displays evidence of pregnancy throughout the story, despite Salinger saying otherwise. But I think these details are grounding - evidence that these characters occupy a very physical place in our imaginations. These innocuous sentences do double work, both telling us something about our characters but also fleshing out the environment that these characters move through. It is these sentences that gives Franny that sense of control and command.
Zooey forgoes that posturing. Instead, the sharp wit carries most of the experience. Consider this lengthy attack and parody of the Prosperity Gospel that Zooey intertwines while describing the Jesus Prayer to his mother who is in the bathroom while he showers.
As soon as we get out of the chapel here, I hope you’ll accept from me a little volume I’ve always admired. I believe it touches on some of the fine points we’ve discussed this morning. ‘God is My Hobby.’ By Dr. Homer Vincent Claude Pierson, Jr. In this little book, I think you’ll find, Dr. Pierson tells us very clearly how when he was twenty-one years of age he started putting aside a little time each day–two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night, if I remember correctly–and at the end of the first year, just by those little informal visits with God, he increased his annual income seventy-four per cent. I believe I have an extra copy, and if you’ll be good enough–.
There’s some of that same mastery at play here - but it manifests itself differently. Rather than working its way in through the details, it’s present in the extended lines of references that connect this piece. The “chapel” is referring to the bathroom where Zooey is bathing and his mother has barged into. The comment is both an answer of the question his mother has asked him about Franny but also an indictment of the Prosperity Gospel. Zooey leaves no room for interpretation, so long as you’ve been fast enough to follow closely and keep up.
Both stories have a certain timelessness. Published in the 1950s and 1960s, Franny and Zooey would have been written for boomers (and the younger of the Silent Generation) as they entered their teens years. And while the exact fashion details and smoking have aged yellow, the essence has not.
I think the detail that has stood the test of time is ultimately, the central point that has obsessed Franny, the Jesus Prayer. As I’ve noted before, I think there’s a deep connection between therapy and religion and I do not think that it’s lost here either. Strip away the slightly religious aspect here (which Zooey attempts to do while he explains it to his mother), and there’s something deeply therapeutic about the thesis of the Jesus Prayer. Believing something you want to to believe but do not. In all the battles against one’s own mind - as Franny is waging here - this would be the ultimate weapon. A simple, effective, manual way to beat your brain at its own game. I think that this is something that we will be chasing for years - and I think that is the aspect that makes Franny and Zooey the most timeless.