J.D. Salinger, author of the classic Catcher in the Rye (1951), wrote the stories Franny and Zooey for publication in the New Yorker magazine in 1955 and 1957 respectively. Both stories were part of a series centred around a family of settlers in New York, the Glasses, particularly the children of Les and Bessie Glass, a Jewish-Irish theatrical act. All are brilliant former radio actors. Their eldest child, Seymour, a genius, commits suicide in his thirties. The repercussions to the family of this act provide the unifying theme to the stories. In Franny and Zooey the youngest member of the family, Franny, has a religious and nervous breakdown. She attempts to ward off the meaninglessness of college life by the obsessive repetition of a Jesus prayer. Her brother Zachary (Zooey) rests at nothing in his attempts to restore her sanity. J.D. Salinger wrote the Glass stories, 'It is a long-term project, patently an ambitious one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in ly own methods, locutions and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful.I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.'
Рита Райт-Ковалева Boeken
Rita Wright-Kovalyova was een vooraanstaand Russisch schrijfster en vertaalster, die de Russische literatuur aanzienlijk verrijkte met haar vertalingen van baanbrekende werken van wereldwijde auteurs. Haar nauwgezette en gevoelige vertaalbenadering bracht voor het eerst werken van auteurs als Franz Kafka, Kurt Vonnegut en J.D. Salinger onder het Russische publiek. Naast haar uitgebreide vertaalwerk schreef Wright-Kovalyova ook originele werken, waaronder biografische portretten en memoires, die licht werpen op de levens en bijdragen van prominente figuren in de Russische literatuur en cultuur. Haar literaire output getuigt van een diepgaand begrip van narratieve vormen en een opmerkelijk vermogen om de essentie van originele teksten over te brengen in nieuwe taalkundige contexten, waardoor ze zowel bij critici als bij het lezerspubliek lof oogstte.
The hero-narrator is a sixteen-year-old native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. After leaving his prep school in Pennsylvania, he spends three days navigating New York City. Holden is both simple and complex, making it difficult to draw definitive conclusions about him or his experiences. He is deeply drawn to beauty, almost to the point of being trapped by it. The novel features various voices—children's, adults', and underground—but Holden's voice stands out as the most powerful. His expression transcends his own vernacular while remaining true to it, delivering a poignant mix of pain and pleasure. Like many artistic souls, he internalizes much of his pain, choosing to share his joy with others. This emotional complexity is available for readers who can appreciate it. J.D. Salinger's classic tale of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951 and has been recognized as one of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has faced challenges for its candid language and themes of sexuality, becoming a must-read for many teenage boys in the 1950s and 60s.