Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
I should have trusted my gut when I started reading this book. Prior to this my exposure to Salinger was though Catcher in the Rye. I hate Holden Caulfield with the passionate intensity of a thousand suns. He described the entitled, whiny, overly privileged teenager that seems to exist in wealthy white upper middle class suburbs. I went to high school with a pack of Holdens, I went to college with even more of them. Each time I met one I laughed to myself. I realized that reality must be so dull that these boys must create their own pain. Now, I thought that Salinger would back off on his theme of alienation, but he doubled down. Franny and Zooey is just as maddening. I threw it across the room when I was done with it. It is a book with no moral value. Overly privileged white kids pontificate about "phoney" people. It is an inner term oil that is completely fabricated out of nothing. Life is so good for the protagonists in this book that they have to create their own inner world of pain to have some sort of conflict. Most of their problems are easily solved, but going for the most direct answer is never pleasing. They seem to want the pain to linger just so it can be experienced. I don't have the time or patience to deal with that. This will be the last Salinger book I ever read. I'm glad he left the world with only three major works. Had he been prolific I fear that I may have been overrun in college.
I'm moving onto my February reading project. The first book up is The Feast of the Goat and the second is In the Time of the Butterflies the theme is the Dominican Republic and the rule of Rafael Trujillo. More specifically it was inspired by The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Wao was such a stunning novel that it made me want to read more Dominican authors.
I should have trusted my gut when I started reading this book. Prior to this my exposure to Salinger was though Catcher in the Rye. I hate Holden Caulfield with the passionate intensity of a thousand suns. He described the entitled, whiny, overly privileged teenager that seems to exist in wealthy white upper middle class suburbs. I went to high school with a pack of Holdens, I went to college with even more of them. Each time I met one I laughed to myself. I realized that reality must be so dull that these boys must create their own pain. Now, I thought that Salinger would back off on his theme of alienation, but he doubled down. Franny and Zooey is just as maddening. I threw it across the room when I was done with it. It is a book with no moral value. Overly privileged white kids pontificate about "phoney" people. It is an inner term oil that is completely fabricated out of nothing. Life is so good for the protagonists in this book that they have to create their own inner world of pain to have some sort of conflict. Most of their problems are easily solved, but going for the most direct answer is never pleasing. They seem to want the pain to linger just so it can be experienced. I don't have the time or patience to deal with that. This will be the last Salinger book I ever read. I'm glad he left the world with only three major works. Had he been prolific I fear that I may have been overrun in college.
I'm moving onto my February reading project. The first book up is The Feast of the Goat and the second is In the Time of the Butterflies the theme is the Dominican Republic and the rule of Rafael Trujillo. More specifically it was inspired by The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Wao was such a stunning novel that it made me want to read more Dominican authors.
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