Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

This is a deeply irritating book to read until it isn’t. The style is the irritant—it is so much—and its dazzle wards you off, tests your patience, rubs you raw. And then, when you have reached the point of exasperation and exhaustion, that is when Salinger gets you; at least, he gets me—it feels like he stands there and opens a door into this other room of meaning and gestures to it, and you catch your breath, because that is the room you are always looking for in everything you read, though it is never the same room or found in the same way, the addictive glimpse of something bigger and beyond. Franny and Zooey are sister and brother, the youngest of the Glass children, all former prodigies and minor radio celebrities born to a pair of washed-up vaudevillians, and Franny is having a spiritual crisis, and Zooey, maybe against his instincts, tries to help. That’s it, that’s the story, plus a shit-ton of smoking. So much smoking. The pages reek of ghost nicotine. Reading this made me think of ASTEROID CITY, maybe the most thought-provoking movie I saw in 2022, and how considered, extravagant, unmistakeable style can be a manifestation of generosity to the viewer/reader. Because there is no misleading illusion of reality, because you are in a created space and acutely aware of it, truth can come in through the art. (Sidebar: Janet Malcom is good mental company on this book (NYR paywall) and the ways it (and Salinger) have been misread.)