I listed it since it that book collects arguably the best two of the "Glass family" stories. "Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters" is somewhat interesting, "Seymour: An Introduction" borders on the edge of insular self-indulgence, and I scored a xeroxed copy of "Hapworth 16, 1924" thanks to an aunt with connections...but it almost wasn't worth the trouble. ("Hapworth" is the last officially published Salinger story, printed in the 19 June 1965 edition of The New Yorker. There have been various rumors about its re-publication, but it's never going to happen as far as I can tell.)GG-Duo said:
The underpinnings of all of the Glass stories are Salinger's interest in a branch of Hinduism known as Vedanta. In short, Vedanta believes that there are "as many paths to God as there are people" -- each person needs to find his/her own way to spiritual enlightenment. There are a couple main paths which many individual paths tend to fall under: some people achieve spiritual understanding through study, some by patterning themselves after a spiritual adept, some by doing "good works" over and over, even if they don't believe in their goodness. Vedanta is kind of a "super-faith" since it sees all other forms of religion and spirituality as being valid. (For example, a Vedantist would say that since Christians are trying to be like Christ, that path will eventually lead to enlightenment.) Note that "enlightenment" is still the Hindu end condition: recognizing that the Self and Atman are "not two."
In any event, you can see how the book plot fits in.
Franny is sick at heart with the shallowness and lack of spirituality in everyday life, as personified in the character of Lane. She recoils and tries to find her path in The Way Of The Pilgrim...but ends up in a nervous breakdown anyway. Zooey's lecture to her is that she's missing out on the spirituality all around her -- their mother keeps the house like a church, for example. He reminds her that God is all around her (summed up eloquently in the Fat Lady speech), and suggests that her path is to act -- running away from it is to ignore her own best way to enlightenment, given her gifts.
Anyway, I hope that makes some sense. For what it's worth, Vedanta -- well, more specifically, the ideas behind Vedanta -- are very attractive to me. I definitely think that if Christians actually tried to be more like Jesus (because Jesus was way cool!) instead of fixating on the literal words of the Bible, they'd be far better off, and closer to spiritual advancement. My two cents, anyway.
