Рита Райт-Ковалева Livres

‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.’First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.

The hero-narrator is a sixteen-year-old native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. He leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and spends three days underground in New York City. Holden is both simple and complex, making it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about him or his story. He is captivated by beauty, almost to the point of being overwhelmed by it. The novel features various voices—children's, adults', and underground—but Holden's voice stands out as the most eloquent. He expresses a poignant blend of pain and pleasure, transcending his vernacular while remaining true to it. Most of his pain is kept to himself, while he shares the pleasure with the reader who can appreciate it. J.D. Salinger's classic tale of teenage angst and rebellion was published in 1951 and has been recognized as one of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has faced challenges for its use of profanity and depiction of sexuality, becoming a must-read for teenage boys in the 1950s and 60s.