Franny and Zooey
Welcome to the read through for Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger, hosted February 2024. You will find all my recap posts on this page.
Some Background
Before we get into anything else, we need to talk about the Glass family, of whom Franny and Zooey are the two youngest siblings, all of whom are brilliant. In fact, they are far more intelligent than their parents, which will become apparent in Zooey. The Glass children were child stars in a radio talk show, giving them celebrity status.
Intellectual superiority and criticism of “phoniness” is a recurring theme in Salinger’s works. Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye complains about it constantly. This is also Franny’s struggle.
Stories about the other Glass children appear in Salinger’s Nine Stories, one of the most important being A Perfect Day for Bananafish. In it, the oldest son, Seymour, commits suicide. While speculation continues as to what Seymour’s motives are, a prominent factor seems to be his inability to belong and assimilate into society. He’s seen too much (most probably a deliberate play on words).
Seymour’s story will become important once we start delving into Franny’s struggle.
Franny and Zooey was first published by The New Yorker as two separate stories in 1955 and 1957, respectively.
