franny and zooey

when i read salinger first (the catcher in the rye, that is), i didn't like him much, even though i knew i was supposed to. i just couldn't. i took refuge by saying that it was a great book, i just didn't identify with it very much.

i'm glad i needn't qualify my praises for him anymore. i loved franny and zooey. i love his writing. and i identify with it just fine. in fact, i identify with both franny and zooey. how's that for identification?!

the book is cleverly and creatively crafted (the alliteration was seriously unintentional), the characters are developed to perfection, the conversations are mindblowingly funny, and the 'plot' could scarcely have been of greater interest to me. i'll leave you to discover the rest. if you do plan to read it though, please don't read this post any further. all that has to be revealed in the book is pretty much revealed in these excerpts:

Concerning the Gods, there are those who deny the very existence of the Godhead; others say it exists, but neither bestirs nor concerns itself, nor has forethought for anything. A third party attribute to it existence and forethought, but only for great and heavenly matters, not for anything that is on earth. A fourth party admit things on earth as well as in heaven, but only in general, and not with respect to each individual. A fifth, of whom were Ulysses and Socrates, are those that cry: “I move not without Thy knowledge!” – Epictetus

"How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don’t even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it’s right in front of your nose? Can you tell me that?”

“You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don’t realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don’t see how you’ll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. ‘Cessation from all hankering.’ It’s this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddamn truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why’re you making me tell you things you already know? 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. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world. … and if you don’t know by now what kind of skull you want when you’re dead, and what you have to do to earn it – I mean if you don’t at least know by this time that if you’re an actress you’re supposed to act, then what’s the use of talking?”

“But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddamn ‘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.”

"I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again – all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. … This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and – I don’t know." … “He told me, too,” she said into the phone. “He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, once.”

“I don’t care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I’ll tell you a terrible secret – Are you listening to me? There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. … Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know … don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? … It’s Christ himself, buddy.”