Franny and Zooey: J.D Salinger
Very American. Very much New Yorky. Classic Salinger humour yet incredibly tedious and unending. Even though, the principle characters are young adults or are in their late teens, much of the book and story didn't feel relatable.
Increasingly snobbish like Salinger's stories, even more so than 'The Catcher in the Rye", the book feels like it is trying hard to sound intellectual and elite, with an out of the world air of superiority but fails to even scratch the surface. This struggle is quite evident to the reader. To cut short, a very boring read thankfully interjected by classic wit in between although sparsely, which made me laugh out loud in between the pages.
This small book also took me around 60-70 odd days to complete and left me exhausted but finally with a sign of relief on completion. For comparison, I recently read Mohsin Hamid's brilliant 2nd Person narrative Novel with the facade of a self-help book, "How to get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" and it took me close to 3-4 days with as much breaks in between.
Coming back to "Franny and Zooey", the Franny sub-part is unbelievably sluggish and thankfully Zooey is somewhat bearable yet Franny makes appearances in Zooey, which further degrades the condition. The book dedicated close to 50-60 pages to one long and dull conversation scene in a Bathroom and I couldn't wait for it to be over, much like Zooey in that conversation.
More nuanced readers and totally not pretentious (being very much sincere here) people may tell you that the book has hidden meanings much like Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video.
Do agree that teenage angst, Hannah Baker & the suicide glorifying pop-culture like behaviour (this not so openly as S01E13), the whole perpetually sad teenager and his/her ways, depression as not so publicly prevalent and openly outed back then unlike recently are talked about in the book. That in turn tries to give a little solace like "The Catcher In The Rye" does to so many young people around the world. Then again, the effects are quite temporary or rather come out as open-ended.
Supposedly, with this review it may seem like, yours truly finally coming of age as a critique. But, sorry to disturb your chain of thoughts, I've not resorted to criticism both literary and otherwise as of now, just that this so-called classic is a very bad read. Thank me later.
Although, I'll be waiting with a "I told you so!!" at the end of the tunnel.
I'll end with one of the better parts which may convince you otherwise in contrary to what I just wrote but nevertheless:
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| "I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody." |
Happy Reading. Have a nice Summer.
Adios!!
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