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Monday, April 2, 2012

Salinger's later works and the anti-Holden Caulfields

Could there be a more self-centered, narcissistic family in all of literature than the Glass family? Granted, the Glasses are prototypes for many subsequent literary clans dominated by a charismatic but irresponsible paterfamilias - but J.D. Salinger clearly went way over the top in creating this family, over the course of multiple novels or collections (three novels + at least one short story) - been reading "Franny & Zooey," from 1955-57 - two novellas, focused on the 2 eponymous youngest Glass siblings - in the first shorter novella Franny clearly on the verge of some kind of nervous breakdown, fainting spells, nausea, she ditches her boyfriend, talks about the meaninglessness of everything she's studying in college (a much more neurotic version of H. Caulfield's obsession with "phonies"), and the longer novella, Zooey, about the 25ish youngest son, an actor, and the entire novella of 200 pages (not quite done with it yet) takes place in 3 scenes: Z. in a bathtub reads to himself a letter from older brother, full of pomposity and bad advice; Z's mother, Bess, comes into the bathrooom and tries to persuade him to reach out to Franny, who's home sick and neurotic; and 3rd scene incredibly long conversation with F. in which Z. criticizes her recent religious obsessions - none of the conversations realistic but even taking them as over the top parody of self-important upper E. Side Jewish-Irish theater family, with some hilarious descriptions of the furnishings, the contents of a medical cabinet - honestly, can we like either of these people, any of them? They're all so narrow and mean, while imagining themselves to be so smart and high-minded and cultured. These are the anti-Caulfields: Catcher was Salinger's greatest work because everyone can identify with some aspect of Holden - but his other works brought him to a dead end because he created a set of suffering characters whom nobody can identify - nor would we want to.

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