Word: zooey
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...written since Catcher. Most men know how to ignore, suppress or outwit the occasional suspicion that the world is really not to be borne?but the young, the mad. and the saints do not know the trick. To varying degrees, most Salinger characters, includinging those in Franny and Zooey, belong in these three categories. Strangely enough, the young, slightly mad saints are also full of laughter...
...characters of Salinger's most astonishing legend belong to a gaudy and eccentric family named Glass. The chronicle of the clan's fortunes is far from finished (the Glasses have so far made their appearance only in Franny, Zooey, and five other stories), but it is already one of the indelible family sagas to appear in the U.S. The elder Glasses are Irish-Jewish vaudevillians now retired to a life of comfortable reminiscence. Les Glass and Bessie Gallagher, professionally known as Gallagher & Glass, achieved "more than just passing notability on the old Pantages and Orpheum circuits." They are descended from...
...Prayer. The new book concerns a religious-emotional crisis in the life of Franny Glass, youngest member of the clan, and tells how her brother Zooey argues, browbeats and jollies her out of it. Franny is first seen during a football weekend being met at the station by a young man named Lane Coutell. The train pulls in: "Like so many people who, perhaps, ought to be issued only a very probational pass to meet trains, he tried to empty his face of all expression that might quite simply, perhaps even beautifully, reveal how he felt about the arriving person...
When they were child prodigies on radio, Zooey reminds her, Seymour always insisted that they shine their shoes "for the Fat Lady"?for all the lonely, unlovely, unseen but very real people "out there." Zooey's monologue soars: "Are" you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know?listen to me, now?don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah. buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy...
Astonishing Life. The reader may almost feel sorry that she has exchanged the mystic's mad glint for the calm smile of a mere lover of humanity. And the parable of the Fat Lady may seem intellectually underweight. But Zooey's lyric rant is not a seminarian's thesis; it is a gift of love received from Seymour and transmitted to a distraught, prayer-drunk, 20-year-old girl. Apart from questioning the depth of this message, critics?notably Alfred Kazin, who apologizes solemnly for having to say it?have suggested that the Glass children are too cute...