Franny and Zooey

by Charlotte Reads Classics

Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger

I confess I don’t know much about J. D. Salinger, other than:

Catcher in the Rye is amazing.

He was properly reclusive.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by reading something written by someone I don’t know much about, but surprised I was. I didn’t expect Franny and Zooey to be so religious. I guess I always thought of Salinger as too cynical for faith.

As soon as I started this I remembered why I loved J. D. Salinger’s writing all those years ago. It’s sparse, cutting narration. It’s sense of focus where people are flailing messy contradiction. Although as I side note I did remember not liking the speech giving worthiness a lot of his characters are disposed to do.

I liked the Franny section best for the atmosphere – the courtship of American college students in the fifties. And I guess everyone in their twenties has experienced the disillusionment Franny is going through.

This book was great for the purpose of literary discoveries – I enjoyed meeting Buddy Glass, who is said to be most like the author himself. But if this was the only thing I had read by J. D. Salinger I think I would have felt differently.