J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [164]
As an actor, Zooey finds himself in a similar position. His chosen work feeds the ego that he realizes is his spiritual downfall. And Zooey approaches his work with the same prayerful attitude as did Salinger. In his letter, Buddy exhorts Zooey to pursue his acting career with the same fullness with which Seymour will later exhort Buddy to write—with all of his stars out, as an act of faith. Salinger reiterates the philosophy that total dedication to one’s work is a spiritual endeavor by fastening quotes from the Bhagavad Gita on the door of Buddy and Seymour’s room: “You have the right to work, but for the work’s sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.” The second quotation also foreshadows the story’s ending: “Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord. Renounce attachment to the fruits.” The challenge that faced both Salinger and his characters was how to pursue their work with all of their strength and not be seduced by the fruits of their labor.
Zooey recites a procession of spiritual truths, to no effect. Franny instead begins to cry, and Buddy tells us that Zooey smelled the defeat of his argument in the air, causing him to leave the room in frustration. Zooey’s contentions to Franny were logical. Yet something vital was missing from Zooey’s logic that caused his presentation to fail. At this point in the story, Zooey himself still doesn’t understand the reason why, a fact that’s again proved by his rude and impatient attitude toward his mother on his way out of the living room.
The story’s final act takes place in Buddy and Seymour’s childhood room, where Zooey makes a phone call to Franny, pretending to be Buddy. The room has been kept as a shrine. It remains exactly as it was seven years before, upon Seymour’s suicide. Buddy has insisted upon keeping a phone on the desk in Seymour’s name as a connection to his brother and in denial of their separation. Within the room, which is childlike in its trappings and overflowing with books, Zooey is drawn to the phone “as though marionette strings were attached to him.” He picks up the receiver, covers the mouthpiece with a handkerchief that he has been wearing on his head, and dials a number.
The richest of Salinger scenes are those that offer a simple act that ignites a spark of meaning, which in turn ignites its own series of flames. “Zooey” contains one of the most surreal images ever to appear in a Salinger work. When Franny is called to the phone by her mother, she is told that her older brother Buddy is on the line. On her way to take the call, Franny walks down the hall to her parents’ bedroom. Around her, the apartment is in varying states of disarray and renewal. The hallway is drenched with the smell of fresh paint and Franny must walk on old newspapers spread on the floor as protection. As she makes her way to the phone, she grows physically younger with each step she takes. By the time she reaches the end of the hall, she has become a little child. Even her silk nightgown has been mysteriously transformed “into a small child’s woolen bathrobe.” The image is a fleeting one and the narration at the end of “Zooey” is aloof, yet, mixed into the scent of fresh paint and the echoes of Zooey’s calls to Christ-Consciousness, Franny may mystically embody the words of Jesus Himself, who said, “Except you be changed, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
It is during the final conversation between Franny and Zooey that the story’s parts converge. For an extraordinary period of time, Franny is convinced that she is speaking to her brother Buddy, calling from his cloister in the woods of New York State.* The misconception gives Franny the opportunity