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As a Way of an Introduction
This is JD Salinger's New York City; and this is the Glass family. The Glass family is JD Salinger's family. Not the family he hid from the world, and not the family he grew up with. This is the family he proudly showed off to the world though the one thing he did just about as well as anybody in America over the 20th century. His own families, each in their own way, proved too conventional to be mined for literature. Each proved a bit too middle class, a bit too cheerful. Each was too void of tragedy to prove literary for Mr. Salinger. But, on the other hand, the Glass family was the family that truly belonged to him, and this family could be rocked and wracked and beaten and bruised with no consequential counterpunching. They could pretty much survive anything Salinger tossed at them; and, with a few exceptions, the family pretty much survived, almost wholly in tact.
It was through these kids - - all five of them in total; and all of them over twenty years of age - - save for youngest, Franny, the only girl of the bunch - - that Salinger exercised his ability to write down what generally turned out to be a great, and swiftly told, short story. Much of what he wrote was written while he was in his twenties, so nearly all of what he wrote sounded spot on perfect to any ear trained to wince at b u l l s h i t. He sometimes changed his style, but every style that Salinger tried successfully was a stylized version of himself. Salinger could detect a phony better than, and before, anyone else could; if JD Salinger had a trademark - - if anything was JD Salinger's trademark, that was it.
Salinger cut through affectation and hypocrisy a time when writers made substance the very bitch of inauthenticity and style. There was very little chance of a prettied-up Jerome David making it all the way to a final pressing. Salinger held a tight grasp on to the distribution of his work. He edited furiously, and disallowed the publication of anything he thought beneath the initial standard he had set for himself when young. The result was an oeuvre that was small in number, but highly prized by fans and fellow-writers alike.
That which he could polish into ostensible perfection was sent to publication house; that which he could not twist into shape remains lost to us to this day. The right choice could send a story off in a million different directions; the right revision could make a bad story great, or kill the greatest story ever told. Read Franny and Zooey and judge Salinger's choice for yourself.
The following is a synopsis of JD Salinger's 1961 double novella, Franny and Zooey. Read, if you don't mind knowing where the story takes, and thereby leaves you.
ONE
une
-01-
The Glass Family. First, Franny Glass, the Daughter and Sister.
Out on a date, Franny's boyfriend, Lane Coutell, monopolizes conversation over lunch at a fashionable restaurant on the lower west side of Manhattan regarding the possible publication of his paper on Gustave Flaubert. Meanwhile, Franny questions the notion of college itself, and the nature of Lane's friends. She takes nil by mouth at the lunch inspired by what she has recently been reading. Suddenly Franny feels faint, and increasingly uncomfortable in her surroundings. She goes to the ladies room and, there, cries for a spell. Eventually composing herself, Franny returns to the table. Lane questions her about a small book he's discovered in her absence. She tells him that it's titled, The Way of the Pilgrim, and there, explains the story.
It concerns a Russian peasant who wanders about the countryside in search of wisdom, eventually learning of the power of praying without ceasing. She then begins to expound upon the Jesus Prayer; which reads: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. This internalized prayer is repeated over and over, to a point where, in a manner similar to a Zen koan, (or a dialogue used in Zen Buddhist practice, to provoke great doubt over a precept, in order to test a student's progress in Zen Buddhist philosophy), it becomes unconscious, almost like one's heartbeat. Lane is less interested in the story than in keeping their timetable for the party and football game scheduled for that evening. Without warning, Franny faints, and goes limp. Lane tends to his girlfriend, and consequently postpones their planned weekend activities. After she wakes, he goes outside the restaurant to hail a taxi. As Franny is left alone at the table, she begins to practice the act of praying without ceasing.
( and )
TWO
deux
-02-
The Glass Family. Next, Zooey Glass, the Son and Brother.
Zooey is smoking and soaking in the tub. He is also reading a four-year-old letter from his brother, Buddy. His mother, Bessie, enters the bathroom. The two have a long discussion centering upon Bessie's worries about his sister, Franny, who is in a state of emotional collapse. During the conversation, Zooey verbally spars with his mother, repeatedly requesting that she leave. Bessie tolerates Zooey's behavior, and simply states that he's becoming more and more like his brother Buddy. She is also wondering what has happened to her children. Children that were once so sweet and loving, and now, quite the opposite. Bessie leaves, and Zooey retires from his bath and gets dressed. He goes to the living room, where he finds his sister Franny on the sofa with the family cat, Bloomberg. Zooey upsets Franny by questioning her motives for reciting the Jesus Prayer. He then retreats into the former bedroom of his two older brothers, Seymour and Buddy. There, he reads the back of their door, still covered in philosophical quotations. After some contemplation, Zooey telephones Franny from upstairs, pretending to be his elder brother, Buddy. Franny eventually discovers the ruse, but she and Zooey continue to talk over the telephone, now seriously, and in a friendly manner. A few years earlier Seymour, the eldest sibling of the Glass family, committed suicide. As a successful psychologist, he was the spiritual leader of the family, and each member's personal confidant. Franny knows that his sister once greatly re-veered their eldest brother, and therefore shares with Franny her some words of wisdom Seymour once gave him. By the end of the telephoned conversation, one in which distance may have offered a greater opportunity for intimacy and honesty, the fundamental secret of Seymour's advice is revealed. Franny seems to find illumination in what Zooey has told her. This is what Zooey has told her: (put on your sentience/stertorous listening machines, Sectors 17 through 22): there isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's fat lady, and that the Fat Lady is Jesus Christ, Himself.
* The name is pronounced (zoo . ee), and not (zoe . ee)
For confirmation, ask Zooey Deschanel, whose name was taken from the aforementioned work.
Pacemore Coldfall
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END.
Ratings
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Reviews
Night at the Museum (2006)
3 bananas out of 4
In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of triumph, the call seldom produces a comer, and truth rarely coincides with the hour of justice . . . so begins 'Night at the Museum,' a film sure to knock the proverbial socks off of those who are (A) between the ages of 8 and 14, and (B) wearing socks at the time they watch the film A more generous man than I could name 'Night at the Museum' a Ben Stiller project for Generation Wii; for those too young and dear to suffer the improprieties of his previous works. While I like the balance Ben's work, this film will never wiggle its way into my DVD collection. It challenges 'Bobby' for its number of needless cameos and seems to believe that simply "seeing" an elder and well-loved actor is near as good as seeing that elder and well-loved actor act. To offer us Dick Van Dyke, Bill Cobbs and Mickey Rooney, and then to give the lot nothing more to do than bark, growl and furrow their beefy browns is a clear waste of three precious and non-renewable natural resources. Something better might've been made of this adiaphorous mess, but marking that which we've been given and not what we could have got, it's hardly a bad film.
'Night at the Museum' moves from scene to scene with some delightful frenetic energy, some typical and not unwanted Stilleresque silliness and perhaps one or two rather oddly fashioned moments of sentimentality. Taken for what it is and not for what it could've been, 'Night at the Museum' is, at the very least, bloody good fun for anyone on the inferior side of sixteen.
3 bananas out of 4.
The First Part of King Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry Surnamed Hotspur (1979)
Wet
If a small man with a mustache could choose any decade from which to film all 37 of Shaky Bill's stage plays, the decade from which the BBC chose the RSC to make this and other 36 is the best decade between "this muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention" and "Dune Buggy Capers 9: The Hunt for Booberella." "The History of Henry IV, Part 1" is this: a staged drama with identifiably staged scenes . . . identifiably staged scenes being an ailment that every partisan of Shakespeare's suffered before the invention of film. Ask yourself: Are you able to make believe? Can you suspend your disbelief? Can you convict yourself of things that you know to be not real? If you: "Yes, of course I can, who would mark the better value of Shakespeare as that which would* make a presentation a mere swifter sale of the goods? Whatever it may take to spare me from a long and labored reading!" . . and if you care to ask "Who's who in what?" you will be Bushy, Bagot and/or Green to find yourself unamused'd watching this mise en scène.
* "Which would" - a common root used by IMDb.com users to render readers fristed, fitch and foul.
Tartuffe, or The Impostor (1983)
A Faitour de Force of Giggles and Grandeur
TARTUFFE, OR THE IMPOSTER by Molière, (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin)
Comedy is notorious for its inability to properly translate from one language to another or from once upon then to the here and now. It is quite undeniable that the fitful psycho-familial rantings of King Lear do move us so; as do other 17th Century sensations such as Henry V's Azincourt call-to-arms or our Jew of Malta's enkindled response to a naughty daughter's apostatizing Semitical dis (the burning down of her nunnery to kill NONE but her; but instead killing ALL but her) . . . alright...that has the merit of mirth in a rather sick, sad, base, colour and hue. But genuinely intended time-worn giggles and humour from yesterday invariably fall flat upon contemporary ears and sensibilities. Flat they fall invariably, BUT FOR Jean-Baptiste Poquelin a.k.a. the grand French playwright of clever comedies, Molière.
Without too much contemporary tinkering, Molière's 17th century play 'Tartuffe, or the Imposter' is the Royal Shakespeare Company's brightest and most pleasant production. Chris Hampton's adaptation from the original French text is faithful AND funnythe text DOES translateand this a supreme credit to Molière's transcendent creative merit.
The casting is as good as for one could wish for such a production. Nigel Hawthorne is Orgon, the inforbearant father taken twice by our imposter Tartuffe. Alison Steadman is Elmire, his wife and better-minded better half into whose knickers our principal wishes to get. Try as she might, Elmire can not nearly sway away or temper Orgon's supplicative genuflexions for Tartuffe.
Lesley Sharp and Ian Talbot play Mariane and Valère, the in-and-out-of-love, might-be, could-be lovers; and Stephanie Fayerman plays (and quite obviously love to play) the family's impertinent maid. A girl, by her low birth and ignoble breeding, so often improperly punctures her way into any and nearly all conversations her opinions, which as invariably as her interruptions are in opposition to father Orgon's. And then there is our principal; the man to which this play lends a title: Antony Sher: the Imposter.
The acutely brilliant Sir Antony Sher is herein as acutely brilliant as ever before or since. Sher is unquestionably a Tartuffe that would find love with Molière himself. He is the ever-so-well-played clever Tartuffe; he is the ever-so-well-played wicked and dissembling Tartuffe. But standing tall and inclining in oblique coital preparedness above all, he is the Tartuffe hopelessly aroused by Elmire's (Steadman's) ample merits. Setting is eyes and other assorted bits upon Orgon's wife, Elmire, the perfidiously prophetically wise Tartuffe wages all earned faith and currency from the family for a less ecumenical inclination toward Elmire.
The 1983 BBC Royal Shakespeare Company's production of 'Tartuffe, or the Imposter' is, I'm sure, available at better libraries and rental outlets. It is well worth the effort of renting; and for others better worth the effort of purchase.
Molière's worksthis Tartuffe MOST among all othersshall never corrode. It is a clever play and a funny play that is rendered so well by the Royal Shakespeare Company; and not a play without some distinct relevance to today's world of demiprophets, prevaricators, shanks, shysters and story-tellers. As comedy is the voice the clever mind at muse, so Antony Sher is the voice, and Molière his muse; and this is a clear masterwork of humour.