Book Give-a-Way: Washington Square

Laura Grimes continues her rocky literary relationship with Henry James, here. After being ready to dump him for good, Grimes's interest was piqued when she discovered that others were enamoured of him -- isn't that so typical? Jealous of these rivals -- her neighbors, no less -- Grimes buckled down with Washington Square last weekend, and discovered that she liked it! Grimes is now hosting a contest to give away a nice little Modern Library edition of Washington Square. To enter, leave a comment to her article addressing specific questions she raises about Washington Square. You have to register to leave comments, but you do not have to subscribe to The Oregonian. The deadline is February 3. Good luck!

Author of the Day Redux: John Updike

John Updike passed away today. He was 76. R.I.P. Ever since he captured my fancy (and informed my adult sex life) with Rabbit, Run, Updike has been a favorite of mine. He is on my relatively short list of authors whose works I plan to read in their entirety. Sadly, that task became easier today. Salon has a terrific and lovely retrospective.

Review of the Day: Franny and Zooey

If John Cheever and Paul Coelho had set out to collaborate on The Royal Tenenbaums, the result would have been Franny and Zooey.

J.D. Salinger’s short, two-part novel is the story of sister and brother, Franny and Zooey Glass, the youngest of seven precocious whiz kids who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Ostensibly, Zooey is trying to help Franny, who is in the midst of a breakdown. It soon becomes clear, however, that both have been unmoored by the suicide of their oldest brother Seymour and the related, self-imposed academic exile of their next-oldest brother Buddy.

The problem lies in the supplemental religious education Seymour and Buddy sought fit to bestow on their youngest siblings. Frightened “at the statistics on child pedants and academic weisenheimers who grow up into faculty-recreation-room savants,” Seymour and Buddy decide to set the youngest two on a Zen-like quest for “no-knowledge” – a quest to be with God in a state of pure consciousness, or satori. As Buddy later explains in a letter to Zooey:

We thought it would be wonderfully constructive to at least . . . tell you as much as we knew about the men – the saints, the arhats, the bodhisattvas, the jivanmuktas – who knew something or everything about this state of being. That is, we wanted both of you to know who and what Jesus and Gautama and Lao-tse and Shankaracharya and Hui-neng and Sri Ramakrishna, etc., were before you knew too much or anything about Homer or Shakespeare or even Blake or Whitman, let alone George Washington and his cherry tree or the definition of a peninsula or how to parse a sentence. That, anyway, was the big idea.

All this mystic education, or “religious mystification” as Salinger describes it, estranges Franny and Zooey from their childhood and college compatriots, leaving them lonely and angry. Zooey insists that they are both “freaks” incapable of being around other people as they both cling to their intellectual superiority.

When Seymour’s suicide demonstrates that the supposed wisdom that comes from the quest for pure consciousness is not enough to make life worth living, the metaphysical rug gets yanked from under Franny and Zooey’s feet, precipitating their mutual breakdown.

Salinger’s book is clever, heartfelt, and sad. The value of its final lesson lies, not in understanding the details of Franny and Zooey’s existential arguments, but in appreciating the emotional crisis the siblings face. The idea that we should strive to be our best for God’s sake – and not our own satisfaction in acquiring wealth, knowledge, prestige, or even wisdom – may not be original, but it is an idea worth contemplating.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Franny and Zooey appears on Radcliffe's Top 100 and Boxall's 1001 Books.

List of the Day: The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read

A new list! The Guardian newspaper just published a list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read:

Selected by the Guardian's Review team and a panel of expert judges, this list includes only novels – no memoirs, no short stories, no long poems – from any decade and in any language.

The list is organized around seven themes: love, crime, comedy, family and self, science fiction and fantasy, war and travel, and state of the nation. I will never read all of these (too much sci fi for me and it includes American Psycho, which I will not read), and I will likely never post the list on this blog. But a new list is always exciting and I will keep lackadaisical track of my progress here. Hat tip to Michelle at Fluttering Butterflies for bringing this list to my attention.

Issue of the Day: Sam Adams

Rose City Reader is a book blog -- not a political blog. I generally avoid politics here. But the Sam Adams thing has me riled up -- The Oregonian even published a Letter to the Editor that I submitted. And while this is a "political" issue, it is not a partisan issue, so pardon this brief departure from books. Sam Adams is the mayor of Portland. He now admits that, when he was 42 and a city commissioner, he had a romantic relationship with a 17-year-old (who described a couple of dates and make-out sessions), which became a sexual relationship only after the kid turned 18. Adams lied about the whole thing before last fall's election, not only denying the accusations, but accusing anyone who believed them of, essentially, gay bashing. Most people seem pretty outraged by the whole thing, but some take the position that it is no one's business if a 42-year-old public figure has sex with an 18-year old. I fall into the majority camp. Call me a prude, but I don't think 40-somethings should date high school students. And when a particular 40-something is an elected official, I think it is fair to expect them to be on their best behavior. Portland already had one mayor who had sex with a teenager, which is one over our quota. Is there something in the water at City Hall? We are going to get a reputation as a pedophile-friendly zone. True, I may be more sensitive to pedophilia issues because most of my law practice involves representing the victims of childhood sexual abuse in lawsuits against the perpetrators and institutions that turned a blind eye to such abuse. But just because I am overly sensitive, does not mean I'm wrong. Here is the letter that The Oregonian printed:

Adams Seduced Teen Sam Adams used his position and age -- and the glamour that came with them -- to seduce a teenager. Whether or not Adams waited until Beau Breedlove turned 18 to have sex with him, the relationship he nurtured when the young man was 17 is what gave him the opportunity and authority to seal the deal. In my line of work (I represent the victims of childhood sex abuse in lawsuits) we refer to a perpetrator's befriending and "mentoring" of a young victim as "grooming." It's key evidence used to prove a case of child molestation. Does Portland really need a mayor whose pastime is grooming teenagers for sexual adventures?