***
If you haven’t read Salinger’s Franny and Zooey yet, you must. And I must give you a spoiler alert because I am about to give away the revelation moment of the book—and my life. Franny and Zooey are two insufferably nuanced yet lovable siblings (Zooey a man’s nickname for Zachary, not the female name like Zooey Deschanel) who are facing the worst kind of disillusionment: spiritual. I say worst because, of course, the spiritual never sticks to its manageable compartment of the “spiritual realm,” but spills over into every cranny of our lives, spoiling the whole barrel.
In sum: both Franny and Zooey, to some extent, are in crisis, looking for something real, something authentic, something that points to love and beauty and wisdom beyond the self-serving strivings of a world obsessed with counterfeit praise and lifeless knowledge.
Which brings us to the Fat Lady.
