Franny and Zooey

More about the book

Franny came out in The New Yorker in 1955, and was swiftly followed in 1957 by Zooey. Both stories are early entries in a narrative series about the Glasses, a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York. In the first story, Franny, a young college girl, arrives in New Haven (Yale) to be with her boyfriend for a football weekend, where they go to a café. The story is essentially an account of their talk. Franny is telling her boyfriend about how phony she finds campus life, and talks about a book she read about a Russian monk who discovers a special Jesus prayer that can become a part of you. In the second story, Franny is at her parents' home in New York, recovering from a nervous breakdown. In a long talk with her brother Zooey, they confront each other's traumas, weaknesses, genius and problems with the world