To begin with, the book is well written, undeniably. Salinger is able to populate domestic life completely with all the minute details that provide its texture just as much as dialogue, he’s great at characterization. Good book, good characters, good minute detail.

I do have one big issue with the book though, and that’s how Salinger can’t seem to get out of the way. While he tries to excuse this with a few jokes and a stand-in narrator—Salinger is Buddy and Buddy is writing the account of events he doesn’t have true knowledge of which is the book—it doesn’t excuse the obviousness of his own forced opinions in the book.

It starts with the girl. Franny has some normal issues of young adulthood, disenchantment and alienation from a conformist and often disappointing society (aren't we all Franny?). But then, as she’s explaining this, over the back of the booth Franny is sitting in we see Salinger’s little gray hairs and glasses peek up, and he’s breathing heavy. Franny suddenly pulls a book from her purse, the Jesus prayer, and then mentions, to her dumb normal boyfriend, something about a Sadaharayataghatama (paraphrasing). And she says it in her own voice, it’s her line to deliver, but it feels like she’s vomiting up cold slugs, because, No, those are not her words… she’s possessed! Possessed by J. D. Salinger who’s now standing at the head of the diner table. He’s shirtless with his fatty old man body exposed to the orange yellow lights, and he’s playing the puppeteer (with pallid arms slack at his sides) to keep the characters’ jaws moving and their necks locked so that they can’t turn to look at him. But damn it, JD, I can see you clear as day! You’re blocking my goddamn view! I was reading this goddamn book and then you came in stinking like loose change and thunderstorms and got in the goddamn way with all that in your face Dharma crap! Ach.

In Zooey we get a nice reprieve in the Glass family’s apartment bathroom with Zooey and his mother. At least Mr. Salinger has the decency to let the characters alone there, and we’re gifted with a wonderful scene, evidence that he is, or can be, a first rate writer. But after that we’re hitting speed bumps every few pages, we’re seeing Salinger’s sweater stuffed under a couch, his pants crumpled on top of a bookshelf, one sock underneath the hallway phone, the other hanging out Zooey’s back pocket, and his underwear—tightie whities—tucked under Franny’s pillow. In the end we can’t help but notice the feet sticking out from under the mauve curtains by the living room window from which Zooey is about to deliver a monologue, and those feet are old and sinewy and sun sunspotted, and they’ve left damn tracks across all the hardwood. It stinks like nickel and dirt. Mr. Salinger, is that you behind the curtains?