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When they were child prodigies on radio, Zooey reminds her, Seymour always insisted that they shine their shoes "for the Fat Lady"—for all the lonely, unlovely, unseen but very real people "out there." Zooey's monologue soars: "Are" you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know—listen to me, now—don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah. buddy. It's Christ himself. Christ himself, buddy."
Franny listens, smiles, and peacefully goes to sleep.
Astonishing Life. The reader may almost feel sorry that she has exchanged the mystic's mad glint for the calm smile of a mere lover of humanity. And the parable of the Fat Lady may seem intellectually underweight. But Zooey's lyric rant is not a seminarian's thesis; it is a gift of love received from Seymour and transmitted to a distraught, prayer-drunk, 20-year-old girl. Apart from questioning the depth of this message, critics—notably Alfred Kazin, who apologizes solemnly for having to say it—have suggested that the Glass children are too cute and too possessed by self-love. The charge is unjust. They are too clearly shadowed by death, even in their woolliest, most kittenish moments, to be cute, and they are too seriously worried about the very danger of self-love to be true egotists.
Some readers also object to the book's italicized talkiness. But the talk, like the book itself, is dazzling, joyous and satisfying. Holden Caulfield was a gentle heart who lacked the strength to survive; Zooey and his sister in the end are harried but whole. Above all, by sheer force of eye and ear—rather than by psychologizing, which he detests—Salinger has given them, like Holden, an astonishing degree of life, a stunning and detailed air of presence. So real are the Glasses in fact (an American student in Venice remembers that some one called him excitedly from a bar one night to say that he had just met Seymour Glass's brother-in-law) that readers feel sure that the stories must be autobiographical. But Salinger has done his superhuman best to keep that matter dark.
Get Well Soon. As nearly as is possible in an age in which all relations are public, J. D. Salinger lives the life of a recluse. He says that he needs this isolation to keep his creativity intact, that he must not be interrupted "during working years." But the effort of evading the world must by now be almost more tiring than a certain amount of normal sociability would be. One critic and fellow novelist. Harvey Swados, has in fact suggested, pettishly, that Salinger's reputation is in part a consequence of his "tantalizing physical inaccessibility."