This month on Chattin' Teh Classics, we explore J.D. Salinger's B side, Franny and Zooey. F and Z is the story of a brother and sister searching for enlightenment in the wake of the death of Seymour, their older brother and spiritual teacher. Franny, 20, is a college student on the verge of dropping out, and Zooey, 25, is an actor on hiatus. This post-war novel (1961) is shaped within the confines of a new existential landscape: what does it mean to be a moral human in the modern world? Also, who is the most Salingeresque indie rock star of them all?
Adolescents For Life
Emily: So this fucking book. Had you read it before this?
Meredith: Yes, but I have the worst memory ever and thought it was just a family story which I guess could be a reading of it but I definitely got more of a spiritual reading this time around.
Had you read it before?
Emily: I read it as a tween.
and thought I "got it"
and didn't
but copied a lot of quotes from it down into my Che Guevara notebook
including but not limited to:
"Just because I'm choosy about what I want-- in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things-- doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self- seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so."
That’s Franny, who I totally related to when I read it the first time. This time, I realized that anyone who relates to either Franny or Zooey probably shouldn't be allowed out in public.
That having been said, I still do to both of them, in that place where we're all adolescents for life.
Meredith: That's a good quote. She was obsessed with the ego.
Emily: Franny can't break down without thinking about her life in the world and the moral failings of everyone else to create the world she believes SHOULD be, and Zooey is sort of an insufferable self-righteous dick. But, I still think Salinger believes in Enlightenment as a way to a more meaningful or fully realized existence.
Meredith: There's a point where their mom, Bessie, says "I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."
Emily: So this fucking book. Had you read it before this?
Meredith: Yes, but I have the worst memory ever and thought it was just a family story which I guess could be a reading of it but I definitely got more of a spiritual reading this time around.
Had you read it before?
Emily: I read it as a tween.
and thought I "got it"
and didn't
but copied a lot of quotes from it down into my Che Guevara notebook
including but not limited to:
"Just because I'm choosy about what I want-- in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things-- doesn't mean I'm not as egotistical and self- seeking as everybody else. If anything, I'm more so."
That’s Franny, who I totally related to when I read it the first time. This time, I realized that anyone who relates to either Franny or Zooey probably shouldn't be allowed out in public.
That having been said, I still do to both of them, in that place where we're all adolescents for life.
Meredith: That's a good quote. She was obsessed with the ego.
Emily: Franny can't break down without thinking about her life in the world and the moral failings of everyone else to create the world she believes SHOULD be, and Zooey is sort of an insufferable self-righteous dick. But, I still think Salinger believes in Enlightenment as a way to a more meaningful or fully realized existence.
Meredith: There's a point where their mom, Bessie, says "I don't know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn't make you happy."
Salinger (1919-2010) liked gardening and Burger King, could hypnotize with his gaze.
Wikipeding Zen Buddhism
Meredith: So, i feel confused about religion. Hah.
Franny and Zooey’s older brother Seymour was their spiritual teacher and then later kills himself, which F and Z basically spend their young adulthoods trying to get over. When they were young, he used to tell them to do things for “the fat lady” and at the end of the book, this becomes a comforting answer they return to. I think that hearing that everyone is the Fat Lady kind of strips down the ego. She smiles, which I can only imagine is a nirvana-like smile.
Emily: I thought she was supposed to be this omniscient figure that you can't prove exists but act "right" for, as in morally correct, as defined by Jesus, or Buddha, etc. In Zooey's case as a kid, shining his shoes for the radio show.
Meredith: Right.
Emily: I sort of glazed over a lot of the more religious passages. Mostly because I don't "give a fuck" about religion as a set of rules. But I suppose that makes me one of the morally corrupt that Franny and Zooey attempt to rise above.
Meredith: It felt like the Jesus Prayer that Franny becomes obsessed with was kind of the opposite of how Christian prayer should be. The whole thing is sort of a chant: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Isn't a part of praying having it be conscious, instead of unconscious? But it really blended Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer .
Emily: Well, some might say that religion/prayer= transcendence over the "self", ultimate detachment, being one with god/the universe etc.
So I felt like this book was a sort of treatise on the ethics of religion but also of formal education.
Meredith: Yes.
Emily: Part of Franny's breakdown is that she feels that nothing about her college education, which she's about to complete, has to do with attaining wisdom or truth, and is more just a means to an end of the fame/prestige she has no interest in gaining.
Franny and Zooey’s older brother Seymour was their spiritual teacher and then later kills himself, which F and Z basically spend their young adulthoods trying to get over. When they were young, he used to tell them to do things for “the fat lady” and at the end of the book, this becomes a comforting answer they return to. I think that hearing that everyone is the Fat Lady kind of strips down the ego. She smiles, which I can only imagine is a nirvana-like smile.
Emily: I thought she was supposed to be this omniscient figure that you can't prove exists but act "right" for, as in morally correct, as defined by Jesus, or Buddha, etc. In Zooey's case as a kid, shining his shoes for the radio show.
Meredith: Right.
Emily: I sort of glazed over a lot of the more religious passages. Mostly because I don't "give a fuck" about religion as a set of rules. But I suppose that makes me one of the morally corrupt that Franny and Zooey attempt to rise above.
Meredith: It felt like the Jesus Prayer that Franny becomes obsessed with was kind of the opposite of how Christian prayer should be. The whole thing is sort of a chant: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Isn't a part of praying having it be conscious, instead of unconscious? But it really blended Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer .
Emily: Well, some might say that religion/prayer= transcendence over the "self", ultimate detachment, being one with god/the universe etc.
So I felt like this book was a sort of treatise on the ethics of religion but also of formal education.
Meredith: Yes.
Emily: Part of Franny's breakdown is that she feels that nothing about her college education, which she's about to complete, has to do with attaining wisdom or truth, and is more just a means to an end of the fame/prestige she has no interest in gaining.
Meredith: She talks about "wise men" vs. having knowledge, and how useless the latter is.
Emily: I think that's not even a question at this point in time.
college=job=money=beach house
If you’re good at economics or some bullshit, you can become an investment banker and fuck everyone over. The end.
Actually when I first read this, I was 18, on my gap year, "tryna figure it out."
Meredith: uh oh.
Emily: A year later at the end of my freshman year of college I had a small breakdown and almost dropped out of school for the same reasons that Franny angsts about. But I spent a week skipping class with Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius rather than the Jesus prayer.
Emily: I think that's not even a question at this point in time.
college=job=money=beach house
If you’re good at economics or some bullshit, you can become an investment banker and fuck everyone over. The end.
Actually when I first read this, I was 18, on my gap year, "tryna figure it out."
Meredith: uh oh.
Emily: A year later at the end of my freshman year of college I had a small breakdown and almost dropped out of school for the same reasons that Franny angsts about. But I spent a week skipping class with Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius rather than the Jesus prayer.
Meredith: It's interesting that the characters from this book don't really change. The egotistical professors, even the stereotypical college girls she was talking about-- "clearly Vassar."
Emily: Twinsets and dates with phonies. I guess now they’d be wearing Uggs and spray tan.
Meredith: But I did notice something cool when i was wikapedia-ing (heh) zen Buddhism:
Emily: Twinsets and dates with phonies. I guess now they’d be wearing Uggs and spray tan.
Meredith: But I did notice something cool when i was wikapedia-ing (heh) zen Buddhism:
Looks like Franny! On the couch— only without Bloomberg the cat in her lap.
Emily: I kept thinking of Mayor Bloomberg, crawling around her bed.
One thing that is an inherent quirk of Salinger and a definitive aspect of his voice but also something you have to have a stomach for: the whole class thing.
Meredith: Right: just accept that everyone is an actor or whateves. Produces screenplays, etc.
Emily: Here's a book about transcendence and the ego and he manages to work in how they own a Vermont-cut wooden coffee table, whatever that's supposed to mean. But pretty sure it's meant to connote luxury. And the boarding schools, and the martinis, and the arrogant boyfriends, and the perfect hair.
Just helped myself to some sangria.
I feel like gchat is strongly influenced by the Velvet Underground. It’s always like "Meredith says... don’t answer the phone."
Meredith: I pity-made-out with some bro to the VU the other night. Sorry Lou.
Emily: Plz. He'd be like AWW YIH GET IT GRL.
Meredith: He followed me home, after some mixed signals (apparentlyyyy) and then I said he should call a cab.
Emily: That’s ridic and hilarious.
Meredith: Kinda sad.
Emily: Speaking of things that may not be funny but I find funny: do you think Salinger is trying to be humorous?
Meredith: Is he mocking people like Zooey?
Emily: Holden Caufield is this zany loudmouth, and Zooey is pretty similar.
Meredith: Yeah but there's always this underlying glimmer of "a good bro."
Emily: Right, it's like they're so genuine their only mechanism is to be completely sarcastic all the time.
I was laughing during the bathroom scene with Zooey and his mom. When he’s like “Mom! Stop looking at my goddamned back!” and she’s hectoring him. And he keeps calling her fatty. I love it.
Meredith: I KNEW YOU WOULD.
Emily: I was soOoOo LOL.
Meredith: Time to get yr own apartment, bro.
Who Is the Most Salingercore of All?
Not these fuckin' bros. J.D. would never be on MTV.
Emily: So right now I’m listening to Grizzly Bear, which I would kind of call Salingercore.
Meredith: How so?
Emily: A little polo-shirted, a little precious, can't avoid the class thing.
Meredith: Do you think Vampire Weekend are the same?
Emily: No, because I hate them.
They’re an imitation.
Meredith: Imitation crabmeat-core.
Emily: Salingercore distilled through pitchforkcore and PaulSimoncore.
The most Salingercore of all: Neutral Milk Hotel.
Meredith: OOOOOF
Eh I don’t know.
They’re southern!
Emily: Well, as we all know, Jeff Mangum is the Salinger of Indie rock.
You can't help but compare these reclusive geniuses with epically small discographies and rabid cult followings. Obvi Aeroplane Over the Sea is Catcher. Perhaps Avery Island is Fran and Zoo. Mangum is really just a novelist with a freight train full of horns behind him.
Meredith: Maybe sought anonymity through his characters? beautiful human
Emily: I think he sought that same moral perfection that Salinger's characters and possibly Salinger himself also strove for. Mangum is a guy who locked himself in a closet for weeks only going out for donuts because he was so obsessed with the tragedy of Ann Frank. I.e. Franny and her cheeseburgers.
television=h-bomb=normal=horrific
Emily: So we haven't even discussed the Holden in the room: this book in comparison to Catcher.
Meredith: The other coming-of-ager.
Emily: Written 10 years before. It's interesting that Franny is so intent on avoiding the obsession of fame that Salinger had achieved, and then spent the rest of his life rejecting. Maybe Franny is Salinger himself talking.
Meredith: Holden would call Zooey a total phony. And a jerk.
Emily: Totally. I think Holden is just younger. He's still trying to get over his brother's death. Zooey has had to already. Holden is 16, Zooey is 25.
Meredith: I wonder if Franny and Zooey resented Seymour. For turning them into "freaks" obsessed with moral purity.
Emily: I think Zooey did, but they both idolized him also. He was the Christ figure. He was infallible, died for their sins. I think Franny especially thinks he was this ideal human, and she's trying to live up to him.
Meredith: Yeah absolutely.
Emily: And of course he's perfect, he's dead. He's not phony.
Meredith: From what we know of him. And Buddy too, their other older brother.
Emily: He lives in the woods!
He's escaped all the trappings that keep Franny up at night and on her cheeseburger diet. Although now she’d be a vegan.
Meredith: Buddy was a really interesting character to me.
He almost seemed like a link for F + Z to Seymour. But it also seemed like he could connect with him posthumously.
Emily: And he was their teacher, along with Seymour.
Meredith: And the narrator of the story!
Talk about omniscience.
Emily: I think the thing that I loved about this book at 18 and hate about it now is that I related to the characters at that age and have spent the interim trying to get over that: this selfish quest for some sort of moral perfection that shuts out everyone else along the way, the judgment, the self-absorption. It’s like, get over yourself and start living in the world.
Meredith: Do you think J.D. knew that? That there's a group of people who can clearly relate to his characters?
Emily: Yes. He is the Zooey talking to all the Frannys.
Meredith: And they are the educated and moral.
Emily: Zooey sees himself as this guy there's no hope for, he's cranky and judgmental, and part of the reason that he rips Franny down at the end is that he wants to save her from the same fate.
Meredith: Yesssss.
He used to do "the jesus thing."
Emily: That whole self-isolation thing is too easy, it's harder to accept the world and oneself and to really live within both.
This is supposed to be a treatise on the nature of human existence
but I also sort of read it as "the plight of the alt."
They h8 mnstrmrs.
Meredith: Fucking conformists.
Emily: Right, the people who don't "get it".
Although, I love this sentiment from Zooey: "Goddamn it, there are nice things in the world. And i mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every little thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos." Salinger is like: Get over yourself! Enjoy the world! It’s much more exciting and interesting than yourself.
I think this book sort of plays out as a struggle that takes place inside Salinger's own mind. He resents the "normal" world, the people that don’t examine their existences and can mull along aimlessly and contentedly and, he thinks, blindly.
Meredith: Absolutely. And then there's the people that follow those who don't follow.
And end up following and then conforming.
Emily: Which 60 years later is quaintly epitomized by Hot Topic.
Meredith: But once you examine your existence...how do you function?
Emily: This all reminds me of a quote from John Stuart Mill— “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
That's the problem that Franny has-- coming to terms with yourself in the world as a moral being and the implications of that and the breakdown that always ensues.
Meredith: The formula for an existential crisis.
J.D. was about 36 when he published this.
Which kind of makes him like a mentor for us young folks/Franny + Zooeys.
Emily: Here’s a quote from Zooey that might be Salinger’s thesis:
“You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the times, and the responsibilities of the Westport and Oyster Bay parent-teacher association, and god knows what else is gloriously normal."
television=h-bomb=normal=horrific
Meredith: oof
Emily: So we haven't even discussed the Holden in the room: this book in comparison to Catcher.
Meredith: The other coming-of-ager.
Emily: Written 10 years before. It's interesting that Franny is so intent on avoiding the obsession of fame that Salinger had achieved, and then spent the rest of his life rejecting. Maybe Franny is Salinger himself talking.
Meredith: Holden would call Zooey a total phony. And a jerk.
Emily: Totally. I think Holden is just younger. He's still trying to get over his brother's death. Zooey has had to already. Holden is 16, Zooey is 25.
Meredith: I wonder if Franny and Zooey resented Seymour. For turning them into "freaks" obsessed with moral purity.
Emily: I think Zooey did, but they both idolized him also. He was the Christ figure. He was infallible, died for their sins. I think Franny especially thinks he was this ideal human, and she's trying to live up to him.
Meredith: Yeah absolutely.
Emily: And of course he's perfect, he's dead. He's not phony.
Meredith: From what we know of him. And Buddy too, their other older brother.
Emily: He lives in the woods!
He's escaped all the trappings that keep Franny up at night and on her cheeseburger diet. Although now she’d be a vegan.
Meredith: Buddy was a really interesting character to me.
He almost seemed like a link for F + Z to Seymour. But it also seemed like he could connect with him posthumously.
Emily: And he was their teacher, along with Seymour.
Meredith: And the narrator of the story!
Talk about omniscience.
Emily: I think the thing that I loved about this book at 18 and hate about it now is that I related to the characters at that age and have spent the interim trying to get over that: this selfish quest for some sort of moral perfection that shuts out everyone else along the way, the judgment, the self-absorption. It’s like, get over yourself and start living in the world.
Meredith: Do you think J.D. knew that? That there's a group of people who can clearly relate to his characters?
Emily: Yes. He is the Zooey talking to all the Frannys.
Meredith: And they are the educated and moral.
Emily: Zooey sees himself as this guy there's no hope for, he's cranky and judgmental, and part of the reason that he rips Franny down at the end is that he wants to save her from the same fate.
Meredith: Yesssss.
He used to do "the jesus thing."
Emily: That whole self-isolation thing is too easy, it's harder to accept the world and oneself and to really live within both.
This is supposed to be a treatise on the nature of human existence
but I also sort of read it as "the plight of the alt."
They h8 mnstrmrs.
Meredith: Fucking conformists.
Emily: Right, the people who don't "get it".
Although, I love this sentiment from Zooey: "Goddamn it, there are nice things in the world. And i mean nice things. We’re all such morons to get so sidetracked. Always, always, always referring every little thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos." Salinger is like: Get over yourself! Enjoy the world! It’s much more exciting and interesting than yourself.
I think this book sort of plays out as a struggle that takes place inside Salinger's own mind. He resents the "normal" world, the people that don’t examine their existences and can mull along aimlessly and contentedly and, he thinks, blindly.
Meredith: Absolutely. And then there's the people that follow those who don't follow.
And end up following and then conforming.
Emily: Which 60 years later is quaintly epitomized by Hot Topic.
Meredith: But once you examine your existence...how do you function?
Emily: This all reminds me of a quote from John Stuart Mill— “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
That's the problem that Franny has-- coming to terms with yourself in the world as a moral being and the implications of that and the breakdown that always ensues.
Meredith: The formula for an existential crisis.
J.D. was about 36 when he published this.
Which kind of makes him like a mentor for us young folks/Franny + Zooeys.
Emily: Here’s a quote from Zooey that might be Salinger’s thesis:
“You just call in some analyst who's experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and H-bomb, and Presidential elections, and the front page of the times, and the responsibilities of the Westport and Oyster Bay parent-teacher association, and god knows what else is gloriously normal."
television=h-bomb=normal=horrific
Meredith: oof
"Damn the whole thing": 1965 edition of Franny and Zooey.
Next month on Chattin' Teh Classix: Bookish governesses! Having scandalous love affairs! With sexy bosses! Getting Victorian with Jane Eyre.
