Why is Franny & Zooey poorly regarded? I’m not familiar with criticism of Salinger.

I’ve said this a dozen times already: The “only poor kid in a rich school” experience cannot be a common one because most schools and the kids in them are not rich. Yet loads of Americans think they lived it, when they cannot possibly have lived it.

I think the writer is trying to paint someone else’s experience.

Virtually everyone can relate to the experience of learning about money and class and realizing you’re on the middle or lower rungs.

You’re describing something else, not the “I was the only poor kid at a rich school” that so many Americans believe they were.

That doesn’t make you “the only poor kid in a rich school”.

Right, but as I’ve commented elsewhere on this post, that just adds up to “there were a few rich kids at my school” for virtually every American, not “I was the only poor kid at my school”, which is what many Americans seem to think they experienced.

Marion repeatedly reminds her daughter that the private Catholic school she hates attending is exorbitantly expensive even under the best economic circumstances.

Right, so if you’re in the 80% of non-rich students, why would you feel like you’re the only non-rich one? Because it seems like lots of Americans have this story of being the only poor kid yet they must be mostly around kids like themselves most of the time, because that’s most people.

It still all adds up to “there were a few rich kids at my school” as the typical American experience, not “I was the only poor kid at a rich school”, for me.

Even the relatively affluent are fewer in number though. So most kids would be going to schools mostly full of kids in their same economic circumstances.

Okay but even the upper middle class are far fewer in number.

What I’m getting at is the numbers don’t add up. By definition, very few of the 99% will come into regular contact with the 1%. Most schools and school districts will have no one-percenters at all. Yet so many Americans seem to think of themselves as being the only poor kid at a rich school.

But how did the classes mix? How can 99% of people grow up among the 1%?

Sure, but this can’t be a common experience. There just aren’t enough wealthy people to go around so that the majority of poor or average income Americans go through something like this.

One thing I can’t figure out is the logistics of all the class mingling. There are simply a lot fewer wealthy people, and they tend to mix with their own, so how can so many of the non-wealthy have contact with them.

Come to think of it, there is a lot of coming-of-age and class issues in Stephen King’s work too.

I think it’s financial straits, not straights.

Right, because family shit storms always end by nightfall. They never drag on, no one holds grudges or plays tit for tat. Nope. Families don’t do that.

That is just your experience though.