Quotes

Quote 450 of 521

The smoking in Salinger is well worth tracking. There is nothing idle
or random about the cigarettes and cigars that appear in his stories,
or with the characters' dealings with them. In "Raise High the
Roof-Beam, Carpenters," Salinger achieves a brilliant effect with the
lighting of a cigar that has been held unlit by a small old deaf-mute
man during the first ninety pages of the story; and in "Zooey" another
cigar is instrumental in the dawning of a recognition. The cigarettes
that the mother and son smoke in the bathroom play less noticeable but
no less noteworthy roles in the progress of the story.

Like the food in "Franny," the cigarettes in "Zooey" enact a kind of
parallel plot. Cigarettes offer the writer (or used to offer) a great
range of metaphoric possibilities. They have lives and deaths. They
glow and they turn to ashes. They need attention. They create smoke.
They make a mess. As we listen to Bessie Glass and Zooey talk, we
follow the fortunes of their cigarettes. Some of them go out for lack
of attention. Others threaten to burn the smoker's fingers. Our sense
of the mother and son's aliveness, and of the life-and-death character
of their discussion, is heightened by the perpetual presence of these
inanimate yet animatable objects.

Janet Malcolm, "Justice to J.D. Salinger",
		   <cite>The New York Review of Books</cite>,
		   2001-06-21 

Tags: perpetualpresence roofbeam zooey franny lackofattention motherandson salinger carpenters lifeanddeath cigarettes cigar fortunes smoker cigars possibilities fingers deaths lighting