Enough Salinger Already - Page 3

Only the Glasses, among the adults in Salinger, get a phoniness pass. As Zooey says to Franny, "Whatever we are, we're not fishy [phony], buddy." This is partly because of their surpassing brilliance, which, like most surpassing brilliance in literature, we have to take mostly on faith; and partly because they're more like overgrown child prodigies than actual adults. (All the Glasses appeared as children on a quiz show called "It's a Wise Child." Wisdom...children...get it?) But the Glasses, like Holden, are all potential, no achievement; all faith and no good works. What do they amount to as adults? Buddy, a literature professor at a cow college. Franny, a student and aspiring actress prone to fainting spells when near vulgarity. Zooey, a television actor. Boo Boo, a Tuckahoe housewife. Walt, dead in the war; Waker, a Jesuit priest. And finally Seymour himself, a suicide at 31. (He leaves 184 double haikus, and they are brilliant, masterly, Buddy tells us so. He can't actually print any of them, though, legal matter you understand. The trouble with having a literary genius as a character is that you can't show much of his ouevre, beyond the occasional letter or piece of juvenalia, without being a literary genius yourself.)

And what sort of wisdom do these Wise Children impart to us? I yield the floor to Zooey, who finally snaps his sister Franny out of her religious mania with this:

"But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ...Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

All of a sudden we're not supposed to feel superior any more. We're supposed to feel humble, because Christ is in us and of us. There's something cheap about this sort of fake wisdom, something tawdry, meretricious, something...what's the word I'm looking for? Phony. That's it.

(This essay first appeared in a slightly different form here.)

Article Author: Aaron Haspel

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