Two Stories in One
"...he doesn't really want to do any good work but that he just wants to get work done that will be thought good by everyone he knows..."
From Wikipedia, channelling Douglas Hofstadter:
An ambigram is a visual pun of a special kind: a calligraphic design having two or more (clear) interpretations as written words. One can voluntarily jump back and forth between the rival readings usually by shifting one's physical point of view (moving the design in some way) but sometimes by simply altering one's perceptual bias towards a design (clicking an internal mental switch, so to speak). Sometimes the readings will say identical things, sometimes they will say different things.
I see J. D. Salinger’s Franny & Zooey as an ambigram. At least two readings of the book compete for primacy in my brain.
In one, Franny & Zooey is a story about the failings of religion—of madness inhabiting the guises of spirituality; of a girl fleeing the apathy of her peers into escapist prayer; and of a family in shambles, overtaken by grief and void of affection. Religion, here, is the harbinger of insanity.
My second reading is the polar opposite of the first—here, Franny & Zooey is about the merits of religion when done correctly. Franny searches for God, misses the mark, but at last readjusts her aim. Her sin is hybris—she fails to see Christ (“the Fat Lady”) in her enemies, the phoney literati of New York. Improper prayer leads to madness, but a proper understanding of God leads to sanity.
The fact that, to me, these two readings can be reconciled goes to show both the quality of Salinger’s work and my lack of religious sophistication.
Franny & Zooey is a story about madness, faith, grief, family dysfunction, and the double-dealings of academia. Salinger circumnavigates these themes with sublime ambiguity.