Differences between Holden Caulfield and the Glass family

If you knew anyone like any of the people in J.D. Salinger's Glass family, which you don't, wouldn't you just like to stuff a rag in his, or her, mouth and tell to just shut up? Is there a more insufferable character in modern literature than Zooey Glass, so self-centered and full of himself, posing and posturing, imagining that he's sensitive and solicitous and artistic, and in fact he is impervious to the apparent suffering of his sister, to the feelings of his mother, to anyone but himself - he yammers on giving dubious advice to sister Franny for hundreds of pages - for hours. Here's the tragedy: we know from Catcher in the Rye and in fact from various enlightened passages in "Franny & Zooey" that Salinger could at times be a great writer - but reading F&Z it's not a surprise that he stopped writing altogether less than a decade after his great success, it's surprising that after Catcher he wrote anything at all - or published anything at all. F&Z is a meandering mess of a book - published in The New Yorker and widely read in its day for people who were looking for, hoping for a glimpse of that talent that created Holden Caulfield - but you won't find it, because, though by H.C. and the Glass family face the sorrow of genuine disappointment in the world, with H.C. it's because the world is not good enough and with the Glasses it's because they're too good for the world, or so they believe. Contrast Salinger's development, or lack thereof, with near contemporary Updike and his sense of how to open up a character through plot, through action, as well as through voice and introspection. Updike characters live in the world and Salinger characters (other than H.C.) live on the page.