23 July 2021
The lecture will be held in person at the Vladimir Nabokov Museum at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya Street
At one time, stories ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ caused a mixed reaction of American literary critics. Yet, when Salinger published ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ together as a book, the book became an absolute bestseller. Readers appreciated Franny’s youthful neurotic rebellion against primitive popular culture and admired Zooey’s religious wisdom. Nowadays, when the fervour of enthusiasm surrounding the book has long since subsided, the stories engage our interest most notably in their paradoxical ways: combinations of different religious traditions; an attempt to unite the West and the East; to correlate an active lifestyle and a contemplative lifestyle, Kierkegaard’s existentialism and Russian hesychasm. How Salinger achieved that, you will learn from a lecture by a writer and literary scholar Dr Andrei Astvatsaturov.
