Franny and Zooey is a short book. In fact, it was originally published as two short stories in the New Yorker--"Franny" in 1955 and "Zooey" in 1957, and then published together in 1961. Franny and Zooey Glass are brother and sister--Franny's a 20-year old college student having a "nervous breakdown" as she explores Eastern religion, and Zooey's a 25-year-old actor who still lives at home. Bookending the two is the rest of the Glass family: the five other children, who we never met, and Mrs. Glass, who talks in italics.

Salinger wasn't one for "action," per se--there's a lot of saying, but not doing, in his novels. He tends to over-describe things--he even lists the entire contents of a medicine cabinet. Sometimes this can get long-winded and pointless, and it was easy for me to see why Catcher in the Rye overshadows this book. Franny and Zooey explore religion to a great extent in these stories, and their philosophizing went over my head in places. The dialogue is neurotic at times and fast-paced. Overall, not my cup of tea.

Maybe like most, I thought I would like this because I loved Catcher In The Rye. What a disappointment. The characters are so irritating and unlikable, and the stories did not have anything compelling about them. I was really surprised because I've heard from a few people that this was their favorite book ever. It wasn't badly written; the descriptive language was strong and captured the characters' moods and motivations. It just did not offer anything interesting, it was like being trapped in a room with a couple of bitter people with their complaints.

I guess I can start by saying that I had read Franny and Zooey only one time, when I was in high school decades ago (during the Nixon and Ford administrations) along with "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" from Nine Stories. I hadn't read either of them since, so I had a hazy recollection of the general outline of the stories, but my experience and enjoyment of the language was fresh and immediate.

Franny is very accessible - you drop into her world of East Coast preppie kids attending Ivy League schools in the middle 1950s and you are a fly on the wall, listening to beautiful, dark-haired 20 year old Franny Glass at lunch with her pretentious and self-absorbed boyfriend Lane Coutell, as they drink martinis and smoke cigarette after cigarette. (The amount of smoking that goes on in these stories is hilarious - one assumes the entire Glass family has since succumbed to lung cancer or heart disease.)

This is where we are introduced to a little book Franny carries with her everywhere called The Way of the Pilgrim. This reminds me of an aside I wished to make: the way we read now, in the Internet era. It's amazing to be able to go online at any moment while I was reading these books, to visit Wikipedia.org or Amazon.com, or be re-directed by Google to Salinger.org, and get instant gratification that, yes, The Way of the Pilgrim is a real book that you can order with One Click in a number of different translations, or be able to immediately read a quick synopsis of Plato's The Crito when Zooey mentions him in passing.

Probably generations of Franny and Zooey readers were curious about The Way of the Pilgrim, and just assumed that Salinger had made it up - but I was able to quickly satisfy my curiosity, while at the same time deciding that no, I had no wish to either buy or read the Pilgrim, and instead was able to get right back to the story. So that's somewhat of a new paradigm in the way we read now, and you don't even need a Kindle - especially if you've got a good used book store near your home or office.

Franny is a quick and entertaining read - you feel so sorry for her! Something is not quite right. She's not eating, she's going into the bathroom to cry, and her date is relentlessly oblivious and unhelpful. Finally she faints, and the story shifts to her 25 year old brother Zooey, who is smoking a cigarette in the bathtub and re-reading a four year old missive from their older brother Buddy, which luckily Salinger shares with us. We soon meet their mom, Bessie, and enjoy many pages of humorous dialog with her. Zooey finally gets dressed and goes into the Glass family living room in their Manhattan apartment to wake his sister.

The remainder of Zooey is all about his attempts to heal her through the power of his words, in turn hectoring, reminding, irritating, edifying and amusing her, until at the end of the story (I won't spoil it,) I gasped with emotion, an intake of breath that literally caught in my throat with a click as he delivered the big payoff line on the last page. It was an authentic moment of truth and a great ending to a fantastic book.

Over the years, I have grown to appreciate J. D. Salinger's 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey, more than his better-known cult classic, The Catcher in the Rye (1951). A college girlfriend first encouraged me to read the novel ("It's a love story," she said), and a recent French film, Dans Paris (based loosely on the novel), prompted me to read it again. Set in November, 1955, the novel tells the story of Franny and Zooey Glass, two precocious siblings both in their early 20s. The novel is divided into two parts, the first chapter named for "Franny," and the second named for "Zooey." In the first chapter, Franny, an undergraduate at Yale, has become disillusioned with academia, and in the second chapter, Zooey consoles his younger sister with his brotherly love in their parents' Manhattan apartment following her spiritual and existential breakdown at Yale.

The two-part "love story" is narrated by Franny and Zooey's older brother, Buddy Glass. At Yale, we find Franny questioning the value of her college education, re-evaluating her relationship with her boorish boyfriend, Lane Coutell, and reading a small, Russian religious text, The Way of a Pilgrim. While having lunch with Lane, Franny eats nothing, smokes, sweats, feels faint, and then breaks into tears in the restroom. The chapter ends with Franny practicing "the Way of the Pilgrim," praying the "Jesus Prayer" without ceasing, as she leaves in a taxi.

The second chapter picks up the story two days later, after Franny's existential breakdown. Much like Catcher's Holden Caulfield, Franny finds herself at odds with the phoniness of life. As Zooey smokes and reads a four-year-old letter from his brother, Buddy, in the bathtub, Franny mopes on the living room sofa with her cat, Bloomberg. Meanwhile, their mother, Bessie, is preoccupied with her daughter's depression. Franny and Zooey, we learn, are haunted by the suicide of their eldest brother, Seymour, who as his name suggests ("see more"), was the spiritual center of the family. Together they find meaning in words of wisdom he once gave Zooey. The "secret" of Seymour's advice ultimately enlightens Franny, infusing her life with new meaning.

G. Merritt

I was lent this book by a friend and read it hesitantly, thinking I would be bored by it, but I was not!

This book is a great book about growing up and facing reality. I enjoyed the characters lives and felt for them.

I wish I have read Catcher in the Rye to draw a parallel to this book, but I have not.

Let's face it: if you're only going to write a handful of books in your lifetime, let one of them be The Catcher in the Rye, and let another one be Franny and Zooey. Billed by many critics as two stories I find it more fitting to describe the text as a novella in two parts. One-fifth of the way into Franny and Zooey, the narrator steps directly into the novel to establish, among other things, the narrative contract with the reader. In this section the narrator all but introduces himself as Buddy, the oldest living of the seven children of Bessie and Les Glass. Zooey and Franny Glass are the youngest of these children. This lucid contract with the reader belies the narrative complexities of the novella. The final scene of Franny and Zooey, while the siblings speak to each other on separate phone lines just one room away from each other, is one of my favorite, and one of the most moving scenes in all of literature.

This book is great. Salinger's writing is beautiful. His characters are interesting, intricate, human, and often intense. He doesn't need crazy action sequences or ballyhoo. His characters merely converse with each other, and yet his book is more engaging than almost any action novel, and it is certainly more thought provoking.

This book has changed me. It didn't change my life in any dramatic or wild way, but, having read it, I am now subtly different. For one, I realized that I had slipped into some of the dubious thinking that Zooey describes in the book. Second, I now view literature in a slightly different light. This book certainly stands out in the crowd. Finally, I feel inspired by this book's high quality - I feel slightly elevated. This probably doesn't make sense to you, who are reading this review. Maybe it will after you read the book.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book, although I still think "Catcher in the Rye" is better.

Finally, if you have read The Bible and a little of Epictetus' work, then you'll appreciate certain passages of "Franny and Zooey" a bit more.

I read this book with my book club this month, and I was blown away! I had no idea what I was missing. I have fallen in love with JD Salinger and since then picked up Nine Stories by him as well. I am taken away when I read him, I can say that I fully enjoy every moment of his writings so far. He is dry, and rough, and very descriptive. If you have only read Catcher in the Rye and think that you don't enjoy Salinger...give Franny and Zooey a try, it will be a breath of fresh air, and make you think too.

I enjoyed the book and the characters and all, but that was completely secondary to what I got out of the book. It is almost like I got what I did despite the fact that the book talks about a group of wonderbread kids who have life so easy that they try and make it complicated. I realised that I did have a hard time tolerating their fainting spells, and when they insulted their mamma and called her fat and such. I began to see them as more spoiled and less actually practising what they knew. So, like I said it is almost as if the donkey was speaking for me...like God used Zooey despite who he was, not because of who he was. I would argue that God does that with us all to a certain extent.

It seems that Salinger could have chosen to use these wealthy, upper class, wonderbreads because of the impact it could have on the reader. It is easier to take something from a preacher who you can see does not have it all together either, you can relate to him...and maybe that is why the author chose to do it that way. Maybe he was mocking the whole idea, as in these are they only type of people who can afford to mope around and recite little prayers....who knows what he meant to do...I do know what I got from it though. No matter what he meant, God spoke to me, even if it was through a talking donkey.

I read this book with my book club this month, and I was blown away! I had no idea what I was missing. I have fallen in love with JD Salinger and since then picked up Nine Stories by him as well. I am taken away when I read him, I can say that I fully enjoy every moment of his writings so far. He is dry, and rough, and very descriptive. If you have only read Catcher in the Rye and think that you don't enjoy Salinger...give Franny and Zooey a try, it will be a breath of fresh air, and make you think too.

I hated this book. I hated The Catcher in the Rye, too, but I figured that it was because I read it when I was eighteen and Just Didn't Get It because it was Important Literature and I Simply Didn't Have Enough Life Experience(TM). But now, years later, I've come to the conclusion that I just hate Salinger.

His characterization is awful. His characters are despicable, unsympathetic, egocentric, neurotic, and narcissistic. If I wanted to experience the incessant nattering of people who are simultaneously this reprehensible and this boring, I'll watch reality television. I had to read or re-read three other fluff-novels to have enough mental reserves to finish this.

I do have to thank this book for one thing, though. Franny and Zooey helped me to realize that life is too short to read bad literature. Never again am I going to fight my way through to the end of a novel I'm not enjoying just to indulge a compulsive desire for completion.

After reading Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey was a surprise. It read like a play rather than a novel, but the characters were very strong and the portrait of the Glass family was quite engaging. I don't know if it is a reflection of the times, but boy I sure wanted everybody to stop smoking cigars and cigarettes, if only for a moment. Was that some kind of intentional device? Anyway, very well done if rather unexpected. I would have like to read more about the family dynamics, with the angst a bit toned down.

(Review based on the Penguin edition of said book)



After having read "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Nine Stories", "Franny & Zooey" was the logical step onward. I absolutely adore JD Salinger, and that book didn't disappoint me at all.



In this short novel - in two parts - you get to know more about the Glass family, first touched upon in "Nine Stories".



Salinger is definitely one of the most talented writers I've ever had the pleasure to read, and I just can't get enough of his writings. He's at once witty, profound, extremely intelligent, humane, well-read, and God knows how many other adjectives I could list here.



So what's this book about? I'd say, perhaps wrongly, that it's about life for people who are too intelligent to have an easy ride through it. But even that sort of description doesn't do the book justice. I just don't know how to describe this book without failing to do so; I think it's better to just trust me and go buy it right away (provided you read the two former books I mentioned at the beginning of this review). You have to experience this!



I'm sorry about my reviews in general (and this one among them) because I never really write anything amazing unless I have something negative to say and criticise; the better the book, the worse the review. Salinger's treasures are too subtle to be apptly described in a review. I could say I love his style and everything, that I find him extraordinary and talented as hell, but that wouldn't do much convincing of anyone reading this review. Salinger may not please everyone, but you definitely must find out for yourself if you like his books or not.

(Review based on the Penguin edition of said book)

After having read "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Nine Stories", "Franny & Zooey" was the logical step onward. I absolutely adore JD Salinger, and that book didn't disappoint me at all.

In this short novel - in two parts - you get to know more about the Glass family, first touched upon in "Nine Stories".

Salinger is definitely one of the most talented writers I've ever had the pleasure to read, and I just can't get enough of his writings. He's at once witty, profound, extremely intelligent, humane, well-read, and God knows how many other adjectives I could list here.

So what's this book about? I'd say, perhaps wrongly, that it's about life for people who are too intelligent to have an easy ride through it. But even that sort of description doesn't do the book justice. I just don't know how to describe this book without failing to do so; I think it's better to just trust me and go buy it right away (provided you read the two former books I mentioned at the beginning of this review). You have to experience this!

I'm sorry about my reviews in general (and this one among them) because I never really write anything amazing unless I have something negative to say and criticise; the better the book, the worse the review. Salinger's treasures are too subtle to be apptly described in a review. I could say I love his style and everything, that I find him extraordinary and talented as hell, but that wouldn't do much convincing of anyone reading this review. Salinger may not please everyone, but you definitely must find out for yourself if you like his books or not.

Wow, two hundred pages of useless banter with no action. Why this is an adored classic, I really don't know. What a snooze!

It wasn't until my fourth reading or so of Franny and Zooey that I began to understand that J.D. Salinger's topic is grief. Grief over his brother's death is the force that drives Holden Caufield as it is the source of Franny's breakdown. Franny and Zooey is a book of remarkable spriritual insight. I marvel at each reading.

It wasn't until my fourth reading or so of Franny and Zooey that I began to understand that J.D. Salinger's topic is grief. Grief over his brother's death is the force that drives Holden Caufield as it is the source of Franny's breakdown. Franny and Zooey is a book of remarkable spriritual insight. I marvel at each reading.

If after reading the Catcher in the Rye, thou art in quest for a solution to Holden's insufferable discontent, or would like to read some Salinger without necessarily being ridiculously biased to the point that it affects your appreciation of the story itself, get Franny and Zooey, which I think is a better book than Catcher, and also holds Salinger's existential answers.
F&Z is divided in 2 parts: the first part, considerably shorter, is FRANNY. We are told the story of Franny Glass (had you read Nine Stories you would've met her oldest brother, Seymour). Or rather, we are told the story of Franny Glass's nervous breakdown reaching its boiling point. She has come to visit her boyfriend Lane Coutell at University. She is not at all well: irritable, nervous, impatient, and moody, as opposed to her usual docile nature. We soon find out that she is obsessed with a book named The Way of the Pilgrim, in which a Russian peasant-turned-spiritual voyager, explains the method of achieving closeness to God by incessantly repeating the Jesus Prayer.
As usual with Salinger's favorites, Franny feels absolutely out of place and utterly misunderstood by Lane. Her disorientation as to what to do, her inconformity with school and society at its peak, and her anxiousness for achieving that state of perfection described in The Way of the Pilgrim, make her collapse.

Then comes ZOOEY, the longer tale. We are introduced to the fully fascinating Glass family... These were all remarkably intelligent children. Zooey and Franny were both partly raised by their two older brothers and thus, by their fascination with Eastern philosophy. Indeed, the book oozes with spirituality and long dissertations on religion and human nature- and surprisingly enough, it doesn't sound pretentious or distant, but oddly familiar. Perhaps because of Salinger's knowledge and regard for these theories.
In order not to narrate with too much detail, it is enough to say that it merely concerns Zooey's attempts at helping Franny to make sense. His rants about individuality and tolerance are rather self-indulgent, but do not cease to be fascinating. What is most important is that he answers all the questions left suspended by the abrupt ending of the Catcher in the Rye: what can Franny and Holden do with their constant disdain of others, their judgment of the "phonies", their sensitivity, and their lack of figures to look up to or seek support from? Obviously I will not translate his conclusions, but it is unquestionably worth reading... perhaps even more than the Catcher in the Rye. It is not as humorous, but certainly twice as endearing, and much more authentic.

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's," declares Zooey Glass to his sister Franny, and Salinger italicizes the words "on his own terms" in case there was any doubt. Not that you doubt Salinger's artistic integrity. His sanity, however, is another story.

Madness is at the center of J.D. Salinger's "Franny And Zooey," published together in 1961 after first seeing print as separate stories in "The New Yorker" ("Franny" in 1955, "Zooey" two years later.) While the two stories work in tandem as they deal with the same concerns and main characters and are set a day or two apart, they feel quite distant from one another. Salinger abandons the discipline and wonderful ambiguity of "Franny" for a rambling philosophical tract that seems to be written more for Salinger and his fictional brainchildren than any outside reader.

In "Franny," the title character is a college student who has had it with pedantic professors and her stuck-up boyfriend. She longs for spiritual contentment, one detached from materialistic ego. Failing, she sinks into a state of near catatonia as she recites a prayer over and over trying to make a decisive break.

It is one of the finest stories Salinger wrote, which means a lot considering he wrote "For Esme With Love And Squalor" and "The Laughing Man." In the opening paragraph alone, we get a wonderful sense of place watching Yale boys await their dates' arrival via train, Salinger displaying both that pungent wit and considerable humanistic charm which made "Catcher In The Rye" so special.

As they huddle in groups in their overcoats against the autumn chill, "each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries."

By focusing on one of these men, Lane Coutell, and letting us meet his date Franny Glass through his eyes, Salinger immediately sets the right tone, describing her spiritual crisis in a series of awkward pauses over martinis and uneaten food. Lane is a decent young man, but absolutely not what she needs at that moment, made clearer as she begins to fall apart before him. She worries about her soul; he worries about her lousing up his homecoming weekend.

It's a fun, subtly presented dichotomy. As she talks about her admiration for a pilgrim she has read of who has dedicated his life to prayer, one is reminded of how well Salinger used spirituality to inform his sublime short story "Teddy."

"Franny" ends poignantly, if abruptly, but instead of leaving well enough alone, he wrote the sequel story "Zooey," more than three times the length of "Franny" and more an endurance run than sprint. Now back home, Franny lies on a sofa in her parents' apartment as her brother Zooey tries to rouse her from her mental state by telling her what life is really all about.

Calling "Zooey" a mess is to be kind. It is pompous, fuzzy-minded, and as divorced from reality as "Franny" was grounded in it. Salinger itemizes the contents of every overstuffed room in the Glass house, even the medicine cabinet. Long, rambling conversations are written out in stenographic detail, while paragraphs detail Zooey's shaving methods and his attitudes toward various brilliant siblings, alive and dead.

I don't want to say "Zooey" is terrible, because it isn't. Salinger offers some interesting concepts. Though the Glass family is pretty insufferable in their intellectual and spiritual superiority (and becomes more so, in later Salinger works), their complicated interrelationships are detailed in amusing fashion. Every now and again Salinger hits a great note.

You may like "Zooey" for what it is; if so you can be happy knowing you have that much in common with the author. The rest of us will have to make do with "Franny," a fair bit of solace indeed.

i honestly find this book very difficult to read, but also very interesting once you get the hang of it.

Franny and zooey



This book consists of two short stories about members of the Glass family. The members of this family are actors and actresses from New York and they used to be intelligent people who appeared on a radio. Obviously the Glass kids had a special education in religion and philosophy.

As we see on the first section "franny", we see a girl of 20 years old that go to college. She is the youngest of the family Glass. However, Franny has returned home to rest a little of it, because of her breakdown in which Lane Coutell her boyfriend didn't care at all. And Zooey her older brother, who is an actor, tries to help her out.

Their mother who is worried about her Franny, she tells Zooey that he most has to talk to his sister to help her out of her breakdown. Then Zooey watching her sister sad, he went to talk to her for a while about her sadness. Franny first tries to hide her frustration and anger, but while Zooey where talking to her and encourage her to revive of her breakdown, she couldn't hide her frustration any more and she argue that her professor doesn't like her because she always argues his lessens and that she don't like to act, so that's why she start to reading "Jesus Prayer", because she in some way she want to get knowledge to understand everything, because she thinks that the world is not smart, like its suppose to be.

Zooey argues her anger in which he tells that she really doesn't understand what the "Jesus Prayer", and then he apologizes to her and leaves the room.
Then Zooey go to Buddy's room, then after thinking for a while, he grabs the Buddy's personal phone and call to the house to talk to Franny, first she thought it was Buddy that in somehow he knew about her breakdown and he wants to help her out, but then she realize that it was Zooey and gets a little of it mad at him, but Zooey tells that she most do what ever she thinks is best for her, in which not be famous ( to not be an actresses) anymore or continuo doing it and the Jesus Prayer!.

I make no claim to possession of extensive literary insight nor capability, so I'll keep this brief. Coming at this fresh with the mindset of wondering "what does it all mean?", these stories are especially poignant. Without over analyzing things, Franny and Zooey strike me as personifications of the id and superego, respectively, in a mind on the brink of self destruction. I found Zooey's foiled attempt at impersonation of the ego (whom which Franny has proclaimed detest, yet ironically yearns to deliver counsel) utterly hysterical. OK, i'm probably off base. Just read the book. Especially if you are a tortured creative soul looking for insight into making sense of a brutish world.

not being hip, I must venture out and say:

Oh my God!!! What???? Who cares? Franny is pregnant. The big twist in this story was that it was in the 50s. But beyond that, what's the point? Take out the pregnancy and we are left with hyperintelligent, overanalytical, pretentious young adults whose parents did them a disservice by never offering them a real childhood. Boring in the 50s and boring now.

As a fan of Catcher if the Rye, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Franny and Zooey. Holden was familiar. Franny and Zooey made me want to shower. I really wish I had the time back that I spent reading this trite piece of...

Fans of Salinger might disagree with my personal opinion on this book, but I think I'm giving a completely accurate and fair review when I make this statement: If you're a big fan of the author, you'll probably enjoy this book, but if you're not a big fan, or you just prefer novels to short stories, then you will probably not be impressed.

This book consist of two short stories that were originally published in a magazine. Both stories are about members of the Glass family, a fictional family that appears in many of Salinger's short stories. The first story describes a date between Franny, the youngest of the Glass children, and her boyfriend Lane, a student at a New England college. Even though the story was written in the fifties, anyone who reads it will probably associate Lane with someone they know. He's pretentious, self-absorbed, and arrogant. He's the type of guy who takes pleasure in criticizing something just for the sake of being different, while at the same time attempting to prove his own intelligence. Like many of Salinger's characters, Franny has become disenchanted with society and she's suddenly offended by Lane's behavior and his views. We eventually learn that she's had this change of heart after reading a novel about a poor pilgrim who finds purpose through religion. "Franny" is the shorter of the two stories, and it's extremely well-written. Salinger does an excellent job of creating a character that any reader can understand, and he creates an environment that is still relevant today, fifty years later.

"Zooey" is the second story, and it is set two days after the first. The title character is one of Franny's older brother, and it focuses on conversations between Zooey, his mother, and Franny.

Zooey is another excellent character. Just through his words, the author does an excellent job of giving the character depth. Again, Zooey is someone that most people might recognize from their own life. He's intelligent, attractive, and think he's know what's best for everyone. Though he attempts to be humble, it's just not in his nature. The majority of the story deals with Zooey's attempts to help Franny understand the book she's read and once again find some purpose in everyday life, although he often allows his own ego to get in the way and resorts to forcing his opinions on Franny rather than giving good advice.

I didn't like this story as well as the first. While the dialog was great at times, it also had a tendency to drag on for too long. In fact, the entire story seemed a bit too long. It's hard to tell what Salinger was trying to accomplish. Perhaps he was just painting a portrait of troubled, confused youths, but I don't think that's the case. Too often it feels like the Zooey character is a reflection of Salinger himself, and that story's only purpose is to serve as a means for the author to impress the reader with his own knowledge and opinions on religion and the purpose of life, not to mention his own cynical views of the people who don't share his wisdom. Of course, other's might find something more profound from the story.

The Franny story is a scary account of someone coming unhinged made even more disturbing by her youth. Like Salinger's other two-tale collection, one feels like a real story with arc and all. The other seems unformed - rewarding nevertheless, but demanding of the reader's full attention.

Whenever I worry that its all in vain, that there is no reason for it all, I smile for the fat lady.

i read this years after i'd read catcher in the rye and nine stories and it was cool to be reading salinger again but it wasn't as rewarding as the first two books were. maybe i let too much time pass and outgrew his style. i dunno. i felt as if i was reading a magazine story and not a book story. i still would read everything he wrote tho if he released all new stuff, j.d. salinger's the man.

It is hard to believe that it is fifty years since this book appeared. I happened to be around then, and along with my sister who bought me the book eagerly rushed to read it then. I have read it more than one time since, and will write a few words about it without in any way attempting to be comprehensive or definitive. A very subjective few words.
Salinger in this work is building the Glass family myth. This would be his central fiction for the major part of his publishing career post "The Catcher and the Rye" Along with the 'Franny and Zooey" there is the earlier "Nine Stories" which contains the first story about Seymour Glass, " A Perfect Day for Bananfish' something about Waker and Walt Glass, " Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" and a story about Boo- Boo Glass Tannebaum,"Down at the Dinghy" Two more long stories published as one volume, " Seymour an Introduction" and "Raise High the Roof Beams Carpenter" were also published as one volume. And then there is the final story Salinger published before going silent, the long New Yorker tale( Hepworth) savaged by the Salinger critics. In this one the colloquial speech which is so much of Salinger's special appeal became overly- mannered kind of solipsistic discourse.
All this is a long prelude to a few words about 'Franny and Zooey' The stories ostensibly have to do with the crises of two of the younger Glass family members. Franny's crisis relates to her relationship with the ' section- man Lane Coutrell' whose academic pretentious values mark him out as part of the kind of ' phony world' Salinger is always condemning. The actor Buddy too has his crisis relating to the mundane world of acting. The epiphany and final sentimental ending of the story which has to do with ' doing it for the Fat Lady' is Salinger's way of saying that despite all the sordid realities of realities there is no escaping if one wishes to be truly holy, from contending with everyday life and ordinary people.
In the context and in the background is of course Salinger's creation of this family of geniuses, of oddball mystics, Jewish- Irish in origin who have a real flair and feeling for everyday American culture. The father Les has been an old vaudeville man and the mother Bessie softshoed with him on the old Pantages circuit.
Along with creating the ring- ding authentic poet genius Seymour and the storywriter Buddy who is his ' amaneusis' Salinger gives us a picture of a lovable family who must deal with the everyday world, but somehow cannot. The great symbol of this is of course the family superstar, guru, oldest son, Seymour who commits suicide in 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' a suicide not unconnected with the seemingly bourgeois, petty character of his wife and mother- in- law.
'Franny and Zooey' has great Salinger dialogue and is wonderful in the whole feeling it gives of the Upper West Side special Glass- Salinger world. 'Manhatanee' and 'Salingerese' speak here at their best. But it also has that pretensiousness, that religious condescension, that simplicity of message( Go East young Westerners and be in touch with your true higher soul) which is at the heart of much of Salinger's work.
In other words fifty years later aside from the Literature and the delight of the language and a world gone, all of which can be loved, there is a kind of criticism. I believe Salinger spiritually got it somehow wrong, and that this too relates to his continuing silence as a writer.
But this does not detract from the special world he created and the pleasure of reading he has given to so many.

A young woman asks, "Isn't there more than this?" "Perhaps not," her brother answers, "but does there need to be?" While not taken from the book, this exchange briefly summarizes this discursive intellectual thought-piece from J.D. Salinger. Comprised of two stories that were published separately in "The New Yorker" during the mid-fifties, the transition to `novel' was never entirely completed, but this book about two college-age siblings and their search for fulfillment is certainly not without appeal.

The first story, "Franny" reads like a comedy of manners focusing on the Ivy League college crowd of the 1950's. Franny and her boyfriend Lane are two bright young intellectuals, with comfortable backgrounds and brilliant futures who go on about the Yale Game, and their course work, and their academic advisors, etc.., ad nauseum, in more than enough detail to make us feel like we're right there in the restaurant with them. But it soon transpires that Franny is no more interested in their insipid chatter than we are. Questioning the value of her studies, the wisdom of her teachers, and the ability of her fellow students, Franny is only going through the motions of her day to day life. Her dissatisfaction comes to a head when she passes out at the restaurant.

The sequel, "Zooey" reveals that Franny is a member of the celebrated Glass family, and finds her ensconced with her mother, brother, and cat in the family's New York apartment. At this point the narrator, older brother Buddy Glass rears his unwelcome head and dominates the rest of the book. Unwelcome, because Salinger loses his artistic distance and allows the material to become cloying. To wit: all 7 or so Glass siblings were child prodigies of encyclopedic knowledge, talent, creativity, and religious wisdom; they all grew to love each other very much, including their parents, and all of them are either successful or dead or both. Buddy's adoration of his family smothers us, and becomes the whole focus of the story. We don't get into the other characters' heads nearly as much as we get into the narrator's. We see every little detail of the story played out, with plenty of voice-overs to ensure that we don't miss the significance of a single detail. Meanwhile, Franny sleeps through the middle section, and Lane is completely abandoned.

But despite the skill with which Salinger portrays teenage alienation, this book is not likely to play well with anyone who is not a white, middle-class intellectual; if you're not a Glass, you don't belong here. This story is just a gentle reminder that even during peacetime, young people can find reasons to be upset with the system - it goes with the territory. Teens who are into self-discovery should find resonance with their own feelings - they're certainly the target audience - but its doubtful that today's young intellectuals see nothing more to be critical of than their professors' affectations. A document of a simpler, more homogenous era.

This is an incredibly complex book for its brevity. Two inter-related stories take place in only five scenes, but the scale of the story and depth of the characters is much greater. Part of this is due to Salinger's uncanny ability to hit the nail on the head when it comes to young people coming to grips with the realities of the world and how they fit into it. In a few pages, we know the characters because we were the characters. We went through the same things they're going through. Whether it's Holden Caulfield in CATCHER IN THE RYE, or Franny Glass in this book, there's a little bit of us in the characters and a little of the characters in us.

Franny and Zooey is about a teenage girl going through the crisis of finding herself and her brother coming to her aid as she borders on nervous breakdown. Franny and Zooey are the youngest of seven children, all geniuses and all showbiz prodigies. The first story, "Franny," is a pretty straightforward scene of Franny's breakdown. It has smart dialogue and I absolutely love Franny by the end of it, but the real meat of this book comes with the second story.

Some people have latched onto exactly what causes Franny's condition as the main question in the story. I thought it a more interesting question: Who is the narrator of "Zooey?" We are told early on that it is an elder brother, Buddy, but I'm not so sure we should take this at face value, especially considering Zooey's tendency to act and impersonate, as exemplified later in the story. Could Zooey possibly be the narrator, and how does that change our perception of the story?

There is a line in "Zooey" that goes: "...all legitemate religious study must lead to unlearning the differences, the illusory differences between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold." This seemed one of the major themes of the book, one of the lessons Franny is learning. It also applies to a comparison between Franny and CATCHER's Holden Caulfield. There's more in common between people, things, etc., than one may think. Sometimes it just takes a higher viewpoint.

This is a great book for a lit class, with many questions for discussion. Zooey's point, as he talks Franny out of her hole, that what motivates her-the quest for knowledge and enlightenment-is no different than than what motivates the people she looks down upon-those seekind money, fame, culture, property. With one swift stab, he pokes a hole in her stance of intellectual superiority. Whether one agrees with his argument or not, the dynamic between the younger, searching sister and older, slightly wiser brother is laced with insight and interest. A great, quick read.