gimley reviewed Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
Review of 'Franny and Zooey' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Salinger obviously hates psychoanalysis (if you need no other evidence, there's the dream he gives Franny) but this book reads like a successful treatment of mental breakdown.
Franny can no longer go on with her life. She tries to have a date with Lane but her bets efforts lead to failure. She ends up back home lying on the living room couch, the destination of so many dysfunctional young adults.
If our current problems are a result of our history, Zooey blames the way Seymour and Buddy brought them up "as freaks" for the state they're in. At the same time, Zooey asks Franny if she'd like to speak to Buddy about her problem. Franny answers that she wants to speak to Seymour. Did the two oldest Glass siblings create their problem or have their solution? Or is it both?
As spiritual mentors, you couldn't pick a less successful lot. …
Salinger obviously hates psychoanalysis (if you need no other evidence, there's the dream he gives Franny) but this book reads like a successful treatment of mental breakdown.
Franny can no longer go on with her life. She tries to have a date with Lane but her bets efforts lead to failure. She ends up back home lying on the living room couch, the destination of so many dysfunctional young adults.
If our current problems are a result of our history, Zooey blames the way Seymour and Buddy brought them up "as freaks" for the state they're in. At the same time, Zooey asks Franny if she'd like to speak to Buddy about her problem. Franny answers that she wants to speak to Seymour. Did the two oldest Glass siblings create their problem or have their solution? Or is it both?
As spiritual mentors, you couldn't pick a less successful lot. Seymour has already killed himself--not usually a sign of spiritual advancement. Buddy has severed connections to the world, but not as a monk, but an academic. He has no phone except the one he left behind in his (and Seymour's) childhood room. It's as if he's saying, when you phone me, you're really only trying to reach the person I used to be.
Zooey fails to argue Franny out of her depression. Any clinician could have told him he'd fail. It would be the equivalent of telling an anorexic that they were too thin and needed to eat.
In the end, Zooey succeeds, seemingly by allowing Franny to see that God is everywhere--including in the phonies and in the chicken soup that she has been refusing. From a psychoanalytic standpoint (not the psychoanalysis of the 50s, when Salinger was writing, but the psychoanalysis of today) you could say that Franny was trying to expel the noxious bad parts of herself by projecting them on others who she then experienced as hateful. Zooey allowed her to accept the rejected parts as good--expressions of God.
Or, you can say Zooey gave her what she was explicitly requesting, namely Seymour. What she was mourning for was Seymour and Zooey reconnected her with him by sharing their mutual experiences of him.
Ultimately, what makes F&Z work as a story isn't the clinical underpinnings but the reader's identification with being the too smart freak in a world of phonies. Who doesn't hate phonies, really? Even the phonies hate them, thinking they're someone other than themselves.
That and the clever theological dialog and the choice of details. I'm looking forward to seeing more Glass.
