Tao Te Ching
Franny and Zooey
Actually two books in one. The short story Franny describes—in a very vivid and personal way—what can happen when an outsider, a free spirit who thinks for herself clashes with the conventional, status quo culture of her boyfriends, teachers, and environment. The novella, Zooey brings in more of the Glass family—Zooey, Seymour, Buddy, Bessie, Les, Boo Boo, Waker and more. A vivid portrayal of genius, the story acknowledges the respect and envy directed at genius as well as the pain, problems, and deep suffering pouring down on the unsuspecting heads of true geniuses in the world. It's much easier and less painful to go through life in a mental haze without thinking deeply, without a clear awareness of ourselves, other people, and situations. For precocious geniuses like the Glass family, that's impossible. Like most of history's saints and heroes, they struggle with a more penetrating awareness—if, when, and how to communicate it.
Themes
Quotes from Franny and Zooey
You can say the Jesus Prayer from now til doomsday but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness.”
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“a state of being where the mind knows the source of all light... the saints, the arhats, the bodhisattvas, the jivanmuktas who knew something or everything about this state of being... we wanted you to know who and what Jesus and Gautama and Lao Tzu and Shankaracharya and Huineng 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 how to parse a sentence”
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“all legitimate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold.”
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“An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.”
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“As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure or even intellectual treasure—and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure.”
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“At least I've never tried, consciously or otherwise, to turn Jesus into St. Francis of Assisi to make him more 'lovable'—which is exactly what 98% of the Christian world has always insisted on doing.”
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“don't hate me because I can't remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.”
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“Everything that everybody does is so—I don't know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless... And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”
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“I don't want you to go away with the impression that there're any—you know—inconveniences in the religious life. I mean a lot of people don't take it up just because they think it's going to involve a certain amount of nasty application and perseverance”
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“I got the idea in my head—and I could not get it out—that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth... I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge?”
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“I wish you'd get married. [Mrs. Glass]... I like to ride on trains too much You never get to sit next to the window any more when you're married. [Zooey]”
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“I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished... It's disgusting”
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“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. I'm afraid I will compete... Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it.”
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“If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page... It doesn't have to be a poem, for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings...”
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“Jesus—the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental, the most unimitative master— realized there is no separation from God... who in the Bible besides Jesus knew—knew—that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look?”
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“Scratch an incompetent schoolteacher—or, for that matter, college professor—and half the time you find a displaced first-class automobile mechanic or a goddam stonemason.”
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“You never even hear any hints dropped on a campus that wisdom is supposed to be the goal of knowledge... knowledge should lead to wisdom, and if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time!”
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“you're beginning to give off a little stink of piousness. God damn it, there isn't any prayer in any religion in the world that justifies piousness.”
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