Franny and Zooey is one of the more genius books I've had the pleasure of reading. It's like an old friend that just gets every twirling bit occuring between your ears, lecturing with just the right amount of audacity to ensure you that you aren't crazy and your thoughts are justified, but wallowing like a moron is the worst idea you've had yet. It's genius in the same way that your middle aged mother is beautiful, that is to say not obviously yet still honestly. It's old, the pages are yellowed, the binding is broken and dull, but because of that you know exactly it's value. The lingo is out dated, the narration can be preachy, but, my god, she speaks a truth that can't be argued. As cliché as mothers and Salinger can be, they're clichés for a reason, an aspect that goes unremembered until you're back home again and trying to remember why you spent so long away in the first place.
No one will argue against the legitmacy of the Glass family, and those who do probably belong to the group of people so detested by the two youngest Glass members. It's a family that trancends the bounds of fiction, formulated so truthfully that one often forgets that poor Seymour never really did shoot his brains out-- I half expect to find their family history on the same shelves of the Kennedy's. The short stories of the Glass's are interwoven by the same minor details that lead to the tangling confusion of real life, that to picture a person pulling these connections from nowhere but imagination seems more fictional than the story itself.
