Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger - Sally Daniels (review date 1962)
Sally Daniels (review date 1962)
SOURCE: A review of Franny and Zooey, in The Minnesota Review, Vol. II, No. 4, Summer, 1962, pp. 553-57.
[In the following excerpt, Daniels perceives Zooey as one of Salinger's most complex and complete characters.]
Reading first a novel like Malamud's [A New Life], and turning then to Salinger's Franny and Zooey is almost bound to make a reader feel acute regrets at both sorts, I think. The writers of scope and breadth and open-end optimism (if that is what it's called) have left such gaps, such hollow centers; have contrived to emote about such public yet simultaneously nonobjective emotions; and have managed finally through their abuses to make of Compassion and Optimism stale jokes. So I think we feel (if stock characters and gestures in modern fiction have not too hopelessly dulled us) an enormous gratitude to Salinger for reminding us that characters in...
[The entire page is 2198 words long]
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