Why You Should Shine Your Shoes

by Matt Moon

During my first reading of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, it was the first quote I underlined in red ink:

“Sir, we ought to teach the people that they are doing wrong in worshipping the images and pictures in the temple.”

Ramakrishna: “That’s the way with you Calcutta people: you want to teach and preach. You want to give millions when you are beggars yourselves. Do you think God does not know that he is being worshipped in images and pictures? If a worshipper should make a mistake, do you not think God will know his intent?”

With regards to my personal NonSalingerRelated religious ponderings at the time, this quotation printed on Seymour and Buddy Glass’ bedroom snow-white beaverboard seemed to be a significant insight although I had little idea how this had much to do with the book’s FatLadyFinale. But by my third, and most recent, reading of Salinger’s story starring the two youngest Glass children, the FatLadyFinale seems to resonate with the idea of “ [different religions] are not contradictory but complementary” and “the paths vary, but the goal remains the same”, which is exactly what Sri Ramakrishna believed according to a webpage devoted to him.

Detailed elaboration regarding the previous sentence’s claim will follow but first there must be explanation of why the FatLadyFinale is invoked and what problem it solves.

Franny, Zooey’s younger sister, is having a nervous breakdown. It’s tough when your childhood included an extensive religious upbringing along with intellectual prowess and you live in a world full of unideal individuals obsessed with accumulating treasure for treasure’s sake. Franny mentions to Zooey about the self-tormenting thought “that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything” and how it wouldn’t be so upsetting if there was at least some implication that if knowledge didn’t lead to wisdom that “it’s just a disgusting waste of time” (146). She quit theater, claiming she fears their egomania will rub off on her because she’s “so horribly conditioned to accept everyone else’s values" (30) but it seems that her sincere problem involves a sense of purposelessness because no one comprehends what’s Good – not newspaper columnists nor the “unskilled laughter in the fifth row”.

Up until Zooey enters his two older brothers’ bedroom, he doesn’t know the answer. He’s unable to have a decent conversation with anyone including a mentioned writer who relishes in the fact of collecting the treasure of television success, which includes formulaic fakeness whose core purpose is to attract enough simpletons to appease advertiser’s seeking monetary profit rather than creating good art. Zooey’s situation, at least as Franny sees it, is not much different than hers. “We’re not bothered by exactly the same things,” she says, “but by the same kind of things, I think, and for the same reasons” (144). Therefore, he’s unable to solve the deep problem troubling Franny because he can’t solve it himself. In their first conversational living room engagement, Zooey says a lot of things that, while not really off-the-mark, fail to effectively help Franny. In fact, he apologetically leaves her sobbing.

Why was Zooey so ineffective? Much of it certainly had to do with the tone of his advice, which seemed very attacking and critical. It was good criticism but much of it had to do with the details of the Jesus Prayer, Franny’s bastardization of Jesus by not accepting him as he was but rather wanting him to be something he’s not, and her breaking the HateTheSinNotTheSinner Christian concept with regards to her vehement disgust at the possibility that her professor musses up his hair before class. And, I would argue, Zooey’s criticism of Franny’s “tenth-rate” efforts at Christianity are not accepted precisely because Zooey is not Christian. “Everyone in this family gets his goddamn religion in a different package” (154) and Zooey’s stepping on Franny’s playing field when he should be tunneling under her playing field to a CertainSomething that runs under all religious playing fields.

This realization hits Zooey when he leaves Franny sobbing in the living room and enters his two oldest brothers’ bedroom to find their snow-white beaverboard full of quotes from Pascal to Emily Dickinson to Zen Koans & Haikus to St. Francis de Sale to Sri Ramakrishna. When Zooey calls Franny and they have their second conversational engagement, his advice is obviously influenced by Seymour and Buddy’s snow-white beaverboard. Before he gets to the FatLadyFinale, he regurgitates the Bhagavad-Gita quote about working for work’s sake only when he tells Franny to act because she’s an actress and not in hopes of skilled laughter coming from the fifth row. Zooey’s advice that Franny was wrong to deny Bessie’s bowl of chicken soup because it was a gift of love is reflected from Kafka’s two quotes, the first, a scene where Kafka refuses someone’s gift of accompaniment and, the second, simply “the happiness of being with people” (179).

So obviously Seymour and Buddy’s snow-white beaverboard heavily influence all of Zooey’s advice in the telephone conversation. And the FatLadyFinale is no exception, as it reeks of the Sri Ramakrishna quote at the beginning of this essay, which indicates that the core truth is much more important than the superfluous details.

The Fat Lady is God with a non-alienating arbitrary name. And just as Sri Ramakrishna teaches that “like different photographs of a building taken from different angles, different religions give us the pictures of one truth from different standpoints”, both Franny and Zooey have different mental images of the Fat Lady. Zooey sees her “on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night […] the heat was terrible and she probably had cancer” while Franny sees her not on a porch but sitting in an awful wicker chair with “very thick legs, very veiny” and she “had cancer, too […] and she had the radio going full-blast all day” (200 – 201). Both images, formed separately, are very similar with exactly identical details and differing details that don’t contradict but could be compiled together to create a single, more detailed image. The only confliction is whether or not the Fat Lady is sitting on a porch or not.

The Fat Lady is introduced by Seymour to a young Zooey in response to a problem he has. Seymour asks Zooey to shine his shoes before a radio broadcast and this sends Zooey into a tirade about how everyone was a moron – the studio audience, the announcer, the sponsors – and he isn’t going to shine his shoes for them especially since they can’t see his shoes anyway. But Seymour tells him to shine his shoes anyway; shine them for the Fat Lady. What’s particularly funny is that, as Zooey says earlier in the book, “there are no big changes between ten and twenty – or ten and eight for that matter” and young Zooey’s problem is the same as 25-year-old Zooey’s problem: why try when it doesn’t matter? Why take all the effort to “shine your shoes” when the audience is too moronic or not in position to see it anyway?

Why should one take all that effort? For oneself, for humanity, and for God.

Immediately before Zooey begins with the FatLadyFinale, he tells Franny that “an artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms.” Then we’re told that there isn’t anyone who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady and The Fat Lady is Jesus, who is God. So when you do something for the Fat Lady, you’re doing it for yourself, for the rest of humanity, and for God. You can’t do it for one without the other, as they are all interconnected. This may appear very Buddhist/Hindu/Eastern but it fits perfectly in the realms of Christianity too. To be good for God is to be good for humanity and to be good for oneself.

Zooey tells Franny, “Act for God, if you want to – be God’s actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to – there’s nothing wrong in trying” (198). And by doing that, it can only help humanity in its climb.

         O snail
Climb Mount Fuji,
         But slowly, slowly! - Issa.