J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
More raw, more blunt and less real than Catcher, Franny and Zooey is nonetheless a gem. With his philosophical expositions, which come to us via the voice of "Zooey On The Cross," Salinger both expounds and surpasses the argument at the core of Catcher. In Franny and Zooey, we have Salinger in a more caustic pill, one that is less easy to swallow but more honest for its open rebellion.
Salinger is railing against rules, especially rules imposed from above by unseen gods of ambition, power, money, religion. He uses the concept of a true, biblical Christ as a foil for orthodox, institutional christs, the christs on stages and altars, the ones who parade through our day-to-day promising reward, release and redemption. Franny's crisis comes not from the Jesus prayer she steadily mouths, but from the realization that she inhabits a false world. She adopts a blank vessel--her own, personal Jesus--and fills it with the things she feels are true. In doing so, she can more clearly than ever see the sham human life preceding, succeeding and surrounding her. She stops flowing through life, steps out of the stream, watches the flotsam pass and sees it for what it is. Who, faced with a clear-eyed account of humanity, wouldn't retire to the couch with a box of tissue? Who wouldn't seek an external savior?
Zooey, for one. His true, biblical Christ for another. Salinger either imbibed heavy doses of The Grand Inquisitor and the gnostic gospels or else reached their conclusions along some other path. His goal, it seems, is to take Franny and the reader by the hand and lead them, however circuitously, to an equivalent stoic-yet-happy, personal spirituality. Salinger shows us that the same "Fuck-you-money-changers" attitude applied by Jesus to the ambitious men of his day can be readily adapted to abnegating modern lords of commerce, politics, society and religion. He further lends a catholic bit of hope with Zooey's closing salvo:
"There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady...Don't you know that goddam secret yet?...don't you know who that Fat Lady is?...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy."
Salinger is railing against rules, especially rules imposed from above by unseen gods of ambition, power, money, religion. He uses the concept of a true, biblical Christ as a foil for orthodox, institutional christs, the christs on stages and altars, the ones who parade through our day-to-day promising reward, release and redemption. Franny's crisis comes not from the Jesus prayer she steadily mouths, but from the realization that she inhabits a false world. She adopts a blank vessel--her own, personal Jesus--and fills it with the things she feels are true. In doing so, she can more clearly than ever see the sham human life preceding, succeeding and surrounding her. She stops flowing through life, steps out of the stream, watches the flotsam pass and sees it for what it is. Who, faced with a clear-eyed account of humanity, wouldn't retire to the couch with a box of tissue? Who wouldn't seek an external savior?
Zooey, for one. His true, biblical Christ for another. Salinger either imbibed heavy doses of The Grand Inquisitor and the gnostic gospels or else reached their conclusions along some other path. His goal, it seems, is to take Franny and the reader by the hand and lead them, however circuitously, to an equivalent stoic-yet-happy, personal spirituality. Salinger shows us that the same "Fuck-you-money-changers" attitude applied by Jesus to the ambitious men of his day can be readily adapted to abnegating modern lords of commerce, politics, society and religion. He further lends a catholic bit of hope with Zooey's closing salvo:
"There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady...Don't you know that goddam secret yet?...don't you know who that Fat Lady is?...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy."
Comments
Post a Comment