Lunchtime read: Franny and Zooey

I have only just started this really today and it is a chance to get reacquainted with Buddy Glass and his attempts to use writing as a way of coping with the suicide of his brother. Each of the Salinger stories that are meant to have been penned by Buddy provide a little bit more information about what happened to Seymour and this starts by describing how Buddy felt to have to go and pick up the body and fly back home with it.

Highlights from the first few pages of Zooey
The character the story is named after is the youngest of the Glass family, an actor who is reading a letter from his brother Buddy in the bath. The letter is old and faded and is four years old but in it Buddy tells his brother that he has been asked to write by his mother to encourage him to take up his PhD and have it as a fallback if the acting does not work out. But Buddy uses the letter as a confessional for past actions and gaps in communication and it is more illuminating about Zooey’s family than it is about him at this stage.

More tomorrow…