Spin Control

“Buddy once said something reasonably sensible to me a couple of years ago,” he said. “If I can remember what it was.” He hesitated. And Franny, though still busy with her Kleenex, looked over at him. When Zooey appeared to have difficulty in remembering something, his hesitation invariably interested all his brothers and sisters, and even held some entertainment value for them. — Franny and Zooey.

Much of the entertainment value of J. D. Salinger’s Glass family stories consists in watching intellectually and emotionally complicated characters work their way through to simple (or, if you’re not a Salinger fan, banal) truths. Much the same could be said of Tom...