Book Review For Monica

Here's my latest...

It may seem strange, but since my graduation from U of A last year, books have become an addiction of mine. I always enjoyed reading–you don’t become an English major unless you like the written word; however, through my high school and college years (2000-2008), I was required to read books related to course material, not my own interests. With the demands of school, this left me little time to expand my mind. Eight years of drought! Fortunately, as a result of my status as a full-time worker bee, that has recently changed. I am now at liberty to enjoy any book I choose. Needless to say, I am giddy with intellectual freedom.

For those of you who remember the books you were forced to read in high school, J.D. Salinger’s most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye may stand out as an atypically pleasurable read. Written in the mid-twentieth century, the novel became an adolescent call to arms and general favorite. Salinger’s other work is less known, at least for those my age, likely because they weren’t requirements for junior English.

I have recently had the good fortune to discover Salinger’s Franny (1955) and Zooey (1957) on the recommendation of a friend. Both short stories were originally published in The New Yorker, but later distributed as one volume. In Franny, Salinger explores the way in which an American college student portrays a false identity in order to be liked. Although obviously brilliant, Franny is a pretender. She is unhappy, but unsure of the cause, searches for meaning in literature and religion. The reader witnesses her emotional descent and struggle to find herself through Salinger’s skillful dialogue.

Zooey is Franny’s disillusioned actor brother. He has not dealt with the death of his eldest brother and is unhappy in the state of his career and interactions with others. Zooey longs for something about which he can be passionate. Zooey’s desire to demonstrate excellence in his chosen field causes him anxiety to the point of paradoxically lowering his standards.
Both siblings are lost in different stages of young adulthood, in ways in which I have sometimes felt lost myself.

Young people sometimes mistakenly believe that once they graduate from college with a degree, they will automatically know what they’ll want to do with their lives. Salinger’s work makes different claims. I identified with the dilemmas of both Franny and Zooey because I, and many of my friends, had moments of identical confusion during college, and this past year. Like Franny, I searched for meaning in literary texts. Similarly to Zooey, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but knew I wanted to be passionate about my career. These themes hold true for almost everyone moving into a post-collegiate existence.

Although Franny and Zooey were written in the 1950s, Salinger’s cultural references somehow remain relevant. Both short reads, they are the perfect complimentary introductions to the stress of growing up without a clue as to your direction. Salinger approaches the issues of young adulthood with humor and philosophical insight. I see myself in the characters he portrays because they are so universal. I would recommend this work to anyone at a crossroad, but especially college graduates.

The Red Balloon

I just finished reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Within the work, Kundera writes about such things as loss, flawed humanity, infidelity, sex, love, death, the Communist regime, and feces. Overall, the book was thought-provoking and imaginative. It made me think differently about what I had considered life's certainties. The philosophical melding of plot and theory was very interesting. However, the chapter that most resonated with me, that actually made me sob, was Kundera's description of a dog's cancerous death. The dog was faithful, intelligent, and loved the main characters in a way that cannot be duplicated through one-on-one human interactions. Tomas and Tereza were forced to end her sufferings themselves and held her in their arms as she died.

I think I was so moved because the love of a favorite animal is an unselfish love. They rely on you completely. In the end, they die before us. We are forced to witness our dogs' pain. To suffer their loss. I don't know why I identify more with the pain or death of domesticated animals more than with the human equivalent. Maybe I feel this way because I believe animals are not the creatures Decartes described.

The idea that animals don't have souls is preposterous.