Re: on re-reading Franny

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Thu Sep 12 2002 - 15:34:39 EDT

I think this is one of those Self Justifying posts :). I enjoyed reading
it...

Jim

Catherine Schoeder wrote:

> I used to write here sometimes and never left but sometimes read,
> sometimes didn't. Never forgot about Salinger, just "moved on" to
> reading other things all the time. But last week, on the plane from
> Milan to New York I picked up Franny and re-read it all, straight through
> no searching for specific words no nothing. just re-read it with the
> knowledge I have of it (which is pretty detailed as it was for a long
> time the story that meant everything) and found so much I had never seen
> before. Perhaps it is the result of 2 years of reading, of living, and I
> saw both. Having now read Fear and Trembling, most of the first Pilgrim
> Book, over half of Kafka's short stories, and god only remembers what
> else I have read that is directly related -- muchless all this other
> stuff that got thrown in a long the way, having lived in New York for two
> years, and having lived long enough to find myself the same age as Franny
> ... what I found amazed me. It was not so much that I understood
> better. Because in the places I did it was really not so important, but
> more that the book was beginning to open up in a million directions it
> didn't before. Excuse me, I mean the story Franny isolated. What I
> found was that I didn't need Zooey as much as I did before. There were
> simply all of these beautiful moments that frightened me because they
> were so familiar but from myself, not from the book. Moments I must have
> over looked while searching for references to what I was concerned with.
> Moments which are so far beyond these intellectual references and are
> simply beautiful moments -- the way she stares at pieces of light, these
> sorts of things that are so small and yet open up and become so
> incredibly large. It's not to say it's "realistic" and that is good. It
> seems that it is nothing but pure beauty. This is rather small. This
> isn't a statement. There is no thesis. But all I can say is that story
> is so perfect and beautiful. All alone or together. And I mentioned it
> to a friend, who said to me "yes, I re-read it last month. Because it's
> like takling to you." Which was by far one of the most beautiful things
> anyone has ever said. And if I use that word too much, excuse me. I'm
> just a rather pantheistic in nature in that I find the most amazing
> things in real life - in the way the light is in my room at certain times
> of day, the way it glows inwards and makes the bricks shimmer, and bleeds
> through the blinds. Anyway, I wish I had a question. I wish this post
> was justified. But I think it's all okay, anyway. Catherine

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Received on Thu Sep 12 15:34:48 2002

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