Franny and Zooey - Supernormal Reads

Paperback, 202 pages

English language

Published Jan. 30, 2001 by Back Bay Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-76902-0

(1 review)

‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.’

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her …

‘Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.’

First published in The New Yorker as two sequential stories, ‘Franny’ and ‘Zooey’ offer a dual portrait of the two youngest members of J. D. Salinger’s fictional Glass family.

Franny Glass is a pretty, effervescent college student on a date with her intellectually confident boyfriend, Lane. They appear to be the perfect couple, but as they struggle to communicate with each other about the things they really care about, slowly their true feelings come to the surface. The second story in this book, ‘Zooey’, plunges us into the world of her ethereal, sophisticated family. When Franny’s emotional and spiritual doubts reach new heights, her older brother Zooey, a misanthropic former child genius, offers her consolation and brotherly advice.

Written in Salinger’s typically irreverent style, these two stories offer a touching snapshot of the distraught mindset of early adulthood and are full of the insightful emotional observations and witty turns of phrase that have helped make Salinger’s reputation what it is today.

24 editions

ralentina reviewed Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger

'I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.'

4 stars

An unusual book [starting from the format: a short story (Franny) and a novella (Zooey)] by one of my problematic favourites. It revolves around two siblings, with sequential but not completely consistent plot lines. Franny is a literature college student undergoing a crisis about her studies and, indeed, the purpose of life. Zooey is her older brother, who tries to help her with a mix of sarcasm and sweetness, even if he is also himself experiencing similar doubts. They share a relatively complicated childhood, marked the death of two brothers and a home environment oozing intelligence and intellectual engagement, in ways that have perhaps been damaging.

What I found interesting about this odd mix is that both characters move in a space that is halfway between self-conscious, immature pretentiousness and mental illness. Is their crisis of faith (in both culture and spirituality) the typical transformation that many middle-class, highly-educated kids …

An unusual book [starting from the format: a short story (Franny) and a novella (Zooey)] by one of my problematic favourites. It revolves around two siblings, with sequential but not completely consistent plot lines. Franny is a literature college student undergoing a crisis about her studies and, indeed, the purpose of life. Zooey is her older brother, who tries to help her with a mix of sarcasm and sweetness, even if he is also himself experiencing similar doubts. They share a relatively complicated childhood, marked the death of two brothers and a home environment oozing intelligence and intellectual engagement, in ways that have perhaps been damaging.

What I found interesting about this odd mix is that both characters move in a space that is halfway between self-conscious, immature pretentiousness and mental illness. Is their crisis of faith (in both culture and spirituality) the typical transformation that many middle-class, highly-educated kids go through, or is it an actual suicidal tendency, as their family history suggests? Did Salinger even know?

The task of interpretation is made more complex by the narrative framework through which Zooey is told. Although it reads very much like the script for a play, we know the narrator to be Buddy, Franny and Zooey's older brother. Buddy teaches Advanced Writing in a rural college and one of the first things we're told (by Buddy himself) is that his letters are 'overwritten, teaching, repetitious, opinionated, remonstrative condescending, embarassing - and filled to a surfeit with affection'. So when occasionally the book displays the same tendencies, should be attribute them to Buddy or Salinger? Similarly, some parts of the dialogue are exhausting to read, circling around the same points over and over. But isn't that exactly what it feels like to trying to talk someone out of depression?