Thanks, but I was asking more about this piece in particular - what does it add? It's presented like it's a research piece but as far as I can tell it's just the author's thoughts on how it feels to be interrupted written up as if there was research done.
FWIW, i think it's terrible. There's a few really excellent pieces of writing sprinkled throughout it, but the whole thing felt hollow and self-indulgent to me.
I guess it's a failed experiment the way Catcher in the Rye was a successful experiment. But it's kind of interesting despite that. I like how daringly he injects esoteric religious material into conventional 1950s settings. But it was too hard to pull off. None of the characters is captivating and most of them, especially Zooey, are asses in a way that doesn't feel entirely intentional.
I'm on a Salinger kick, having run across his books for a couple bucks in a used bookstore and never having read him before. He is a singular writer. Catcher was a freak success. Like Kurt Cobain, Salinger would clearly have been happier as an obscure cult artist. But Catcher was the opening bell of the 60s counterculture just as the 50s were getting started. Once it picked up a wave it became a tsunami.
I was surprised at how good the pieces in Nine Stories are, e.g. "The Laughing Man" and "Love and Squalor". He paints childhood and adolescence beautifully, as well as charming interactions between children and sensitive young men. But it all gives an impression of, um, arrested development. Did he write any great adult characters? The pervy teacher in Catcher doesn't count. It seems that adults in Salinger's world mostly just get sour, and the one who is clearly his favorite he has blow his brains out in front of his wife.
More Salinger books are supposed to be coming out now that he's beyond the reach of his fans and the press, and it will be interesting to see on which side of the divide they end up. One hopes they'll be awesome. But I suspect the odds are better that they'll be weird and turned in on themselves.
Could it also be that _Zooey_ was simply read at a different time in your life? I first read _Catcher_ when I was the disgruntled youth that you expect to read it, and found it brilliant. I've re-read it a couple times since then and now find it far less so.
I acknowledge that the writing is still really great, but I'm just not able to connect to it the same way I do other books that I read from the same era.
No, I only read Catcher a couple weeks ago. It's on an altogether other level than F&Z, even though it's no longer shockingly original like it must have been in 1951. I found it brilliant stylistically; only a voice, but what a voice. The emotional impact was different for me than it would have been when I was that age, but I remember very well how all that feels, so I was cheering on behalf of my younger self.
But what are the books that you do still find brilliant? :)
> But what are the books that you do still find brilliant?
With every Vonnegut novel I re-read, I discover something new, more insightful, more brilliant and more compelling than I was able to grasp the last time I read it. This is true for just about every Vonnegut book I've bothered to re-read.
The same holds true for Mark Twain (so far). I recently re-read Tom Sawyer, which I only re-read after realizing that I couldn't really remember anything from my first reading of it. Phenomenal.
There are more, I'm sure, but I'd have to give it thought. The only non-print thing I can think of that is as compelling is "Primer", which is a must-watch movie, but I don't know why I'm mentioning it here, except to remark that it takes more than a single viewing to digest the entire film.
I finished F&Z last night. The thing is a train wreck. Now I'm curious to read the rest of what Salinger published (pretty easy to do) because Catcher and Nine Stories are so good and F&Z borderline intolerable. Perhaps it was his Metal Machine Music.
Does Tenenbaums principally consist of turgid dialogue about mysticism?
