“Zooey” (1957)

As I say, it’s possible to take Franny and Zooey, published in 1961, as a kind of novel in the eccentric manner of say William Faulknew, e.g., If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem or Go Down, Moses. Maybe Salinger even intended it that way. “Franny,” a longish short story too short to be a novella, and “Zooey,” a shortish novel too long to be a novella, are obviously related. Franny and Zooey are brother and sister, Glasses, and both narratives are about the same thing, Franny’s nervous breakdown and/or spiritual crisis. Together they remain one of the cornerstones of the Glass family saga as we’ve known it since the 1950s. Franny and Zooey are the youngest of seven children born between 1917 and 1934, all of whom were regulars at one point or another on a radio show called It’s a Wise Child. A lot of the bulk of “Zooey” is Glass family backstory. In fact, it’s notably remote from the main players as we have them so far, Seymour and Buddy, the two oldest. Buddy is the chronicler of these tales and happy to insert and sneak in credit for himself at will, but he’s not there with Franny and Zooey, and Seymour is years dead. We get a spirited comical dialogue between Zooey and their mother Bessie (Zooey is in the bath, reading a long letter from Buddy). And then we get a much longer speechy dialogue between Zooey and Franny on the complications of life etc. We are still getting backstory in the Glass family stories. That’s a large part of “Zooey.” It still feels like preamble to something much larger. In the legend so far, Buddy and especially Seymour are spiritual seekers well-versed on many world religions and sects and their ways. Franny’s crisis, obviously connected in some way to Seymour, is based on an anonymous mystic Christian 19th-century Russian peasant’s book with ideas of how to live (a real tome, The Way of a Pilgrim). Salinger’s voice is clarion and charming as always—a natural New Yorker writer and pleasure to read. He was on his own spiritual quest, increasingly seen in the last four pieces he published in book form. I want to take this opportunity to say that, if there is more to the Glass family story, as persistent rumors say, then let’s have it, please. What we’ve got has never felt complete.

J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
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