Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger

Franny and Zooey is another instalment of the Glass family saga from writer Salinger. Through out the two short story collections, Salinger has dedicated his talents to describing the life and times of the Glass Family. This is evident in Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction and Nine Stories in which they are the centres of focus. The only outlet of Salinger's intelligence as we saw in The Catcher In The Rye is through the effect the suicide of older brother Seymour has on his other brothers and sisters The novel is a depiction of the exploits of the two youngest children, Franny and Zooey who have been psychologically affected ...

When I read "Franny and Zooey" for the first time I was at school at a time when almost every high school English class has to face first "The Catcher in the Rye" and then, when they are a bit older, either Shakespeare's "Hamlet" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream". My teacher who had been teacher English for about 25 years luckily told us one fine day that he was entirely sick of talking about exactly the same things all the time, especially since we stundents did not seem to care at all and why bother doing the whole crap anyway, and how stupid of him to hope that he might still find somebody to even pay attention. ...