J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [185]
For all its bite, there is not a mean-spirited word in Updike’s review, and it was written with a measure of honor that has endeared it to even the most defensive of Salinger fans.† After delivering his criticism, Updike exited his article with grace, reminding readers that its subject, regardless of how flawed, was still the work of a great artist:
The Glass saga, as he has sketched it out, potentially contains great fiction. When all reservations have been entered, in the correctly unctuous and apprehensive tone, about the direction he has taken, it remains to acknowledge that it is a direction, and that the refusal to rest content, the willingness to risk excess on behalf of one’s obsessions, is what distinguishes artists from entertainers, and what makes some artists adventurers on behalf of us all.21
The novelist Mary McCarthy, in what was by far the most searing assault, delivered no such grace. McCarthy had built her reputation through a series of blistering essays that aimed to demolish literary sacred cows. Her personal views were as far removed from Salinger’s as was humanly possible. Her autobiography, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, had recounted her disgust with religion, her descent into atheism, and the transfer of her faith into her own intellect—the very antithesis of Franny in Salinger’s book. That McCarthy should attack Franny and Zooey and Salinger especially came as little surprise to those who knew her. But it was the vehemence of her attack that caught everyone off guard.
Writing for the English Sunday newspaper The Observer in early 1962, in an article later reprinted in Harper’s, McCarthy accused Salinger of having stolen his characterizations from Hemingway. She then went on to condemn not only Franny and Zooey but The Catcher in the Rye. “Salinger sees the world in terms of allies and enemies. [Even] The Catcher in the Rye, like Hemingway’s books, is based on a scheme of exclusiveness. The characters are divided into those who belong to the club and those who don’t.” The “club” obviously now referred to the Glass family, and McCarthy rightly perceived that the most effective way to strike at the author was through his imaginary children. “And who are these wonder kids but Salinger himself?” she asked. “… to be confronted with the seven faces of Salinger, all wise and lovable and simple, is to gaze into a terrifying narcissus pool. Salinger’s world contains nothing but Salinger.”22
In one fell swoop McCarthy had struck three targets simultaneously: the thrust of Franny and Zooey, the originality of Catcher, and the motivation of the author.* Perhaps worst of all to Salinger, who was incensed by McCarthy’s review, was that she had accused him of being two things he most detested in the world: an egotist and a phony. Such strikes could not go without response. However belatedly, William Maxwell rose in Salinger’s defense. His argument was in reaction to McCarthy’s review in particular but may well have applied to all the attacks that Salinger had suffered at the hands of critics. “Oh, God, there’s too much blood in the water,” Maxwell mourned. “His virtues were not of a kind she would have appreciated—the charm of his dialogue and economy and total absence of intellectual pretence at that point. The Glass stories are not intellectual. They’re mystical.”23
Today, Franny and Zooey is widely regarded as a masterpiece. It has been revered by generations of readers who have embraced it as a story suffused with empathy, humanity, and spirituality. To modern ears, the mockery and scorn of its contemporary critics have the tinny echo of concepts long since passed away, while Franny and Zooey remains timeless. We cannot imagine “Franny” without “Zooey,” and in no way consider “Zooey” unrestrained