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Franny and Zooey
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Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Author: J.D. Salinger
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $11.19
You Save: $ 2.80 ( 20% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Author: J.D. Salinger
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Average Customer Rating:
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Franny and Zooey Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316769020
ISBN: 0316769029
Label: Back Bay Books
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2001-01-30
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Studio: Back Bay Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316769020
ISBN: 0316769029
Label: Back Bay Books
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 208
Publication Date: 2001-01-30
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Studio: Back Bay Books
Editorial Review of Franny and Zooey
The author writes: Franny came out in The New Yorker/EM Zooey. Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I'm doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses. It is a long-term project, patently an ambitious one, and there is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. I love working on these Glass stories, I've been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.
Customer Reviews of Franny and Zooey
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Franny and Zooey: A Love Story.
Review: Over the years, I have grown to appreciate J. D. Salinger's 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey, more than his better-known cult classic, The Catcher in the Rye (1951). A college girlfriend first encouraged me to read the novel ("It's a love story," she said), and a recent French film, Dans Paris (based loosely on the novel), prompted me to read it again. Set in November, 1955, the novel tells the story of Franny and Zooey Glass, two precocious siblings both in their early 20s. The novel is divided into two parts, the first chapter named for "Franny," and the second named for "Zooey." In the first chapter, Franny, an undergraduate at Yale, has become disillusioned with academia, and in the second chapter, Zooey consoles his younger sister with his brotherly love in their parents' Manhattan apartment following her spiritual and existential breakdown at Yale.
The two-part "love story" is narrated by Franny and Zooey's older brother, Buddy Glass. At Yale, we find Franny questioning the value of her college education, re-evaluating her relationship with her boorish boyfriend, Lane Coutell, and reading a small, Russian religious text, The Way of a Pilgrim. While having lunch with Lane, Franny eats nothing, smokes, sweats, feels faint, and then breaks into tears in the restroom. The chapter ends with Franny practicing "the Way of the Pilgrim," praying the "Jesus Prayer" without ceasing, as she leaves in a taxi.
The second chapter picks up the story two days later, after Franny's existential breakdown. Much like Catcher's Holden Caulfield, Franny finds herself at odds with the phoniness of life. As Zooey smokes and reads a four-year-old letter from his brother, Buddy, in the bathtub, Franny mopes on the living room sofa with her cat, Bloomberg. Meanwhile, their mother, Bessie, is preoccupied with her daughter's depression. Franny and Zooey, we learn, are haunted by the suicide of their eldest brother, Seymour, who as his name suggests ("see more"), was the spiritual center of the family. Together they find meaning in words of wisdom he once gave Zooey. The "secret" of Seymour's advice ultimately enlightens Franny, infusing her life with new meaning.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A book about growing up
Review: I was lent this book by a friend and read it hesitantly, thinking I would be bored by it, but I was not!
This book is a great book about growing up and facing reality. I enjoyed the characters lives and felt for them.
I wish I have read Catcher in the Rye to draw a parallel to this book, but I have not.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pay attention young writers. Study this book.
Review: Let's face it: if you're only going to write a handful of books in your lifetime, let one of them be The Catcher in the Rye, and let another one be Franny and Zooey. Billed by many critics as two stories I find it more fitting to describe the text as a novella in two parts. One-fifth of the way into Franny and Zooey, the narrator steps directly into the novel to establish, among other things, the narrative contract with the reader. In this section the narrator all but introduces himself as Buddy, the oldest living of the seven children of Bessie and Les Glass. Zooey and Franny Glass are the youngest of these children. This lucid contract with the reader belies the narrative complexities of the novella. The final scene of Franny and Zooey, while the siblings speak to each other on separate phone lines just one room away from each other, is one of my favorite, and one of the most moving scenes in all of literature.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One of the Best Ever
Review: This book is great. Salinger's writing is beautiful. His characters are interesting, intricate, human, and often intense. He doesn't need crazy action sequences or ballyhoo. His characters merely converse with each other, and yet his book is more engaging than almost any action novel, and it is certainly more thought provoking.
This book has changed me. It didn't change my life in any dramatic or wild way, but, having read it, I am now subtly different. For one, I realized that I had slipped into some of the dubious thinking that Zooey describes in the book. Second, I now view literature in a slightly different light. This book certainly stands out in the crowd. Finally, I feel inspired by this book's high quality - I feel slightly elevated. This probably doesn't make sense to you, who are reading this review. Maybe it will after you read the book.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book, although I still think "Catcher in the Rye" is better.
Finally, if you have read The Bible and a little of Epictetus' work, then you'll appreciate certain passages of "Franny and Zooey" a bit more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I had no idea what I was missing!
Review: I read this book with my book club this month, and I was blown away! I had no idea what I was missing. I have fallen in love with JD Salinger and since then picked up Nine Stories by him as well. I am taken away when I read him, I can say that I fully enjoy every moment of his writings so far. He is dry, and rough, and very descriptive. If you have only read Catcher in the Rye and think that you don't enjoy Salinger...give Franny and Zooey a try, it will be a breath of fresh air, and make you think too.
I enjoyed the book and the characters and all, but that was completely secondary to what I got out of the book. It is almost like I got what I did despite the fact that the book talks about a group of wonderbread kids who have life so easy that they try and make it complicated. I realised that I did have a hard time tolerating their fainting spells, and when they insulted their mamma and called her fat and such. I began to see them as more spoiled and less actually practising what they knew.
It seems that Salinger could have chosen to use these wealthy, upper class, wonderbreads because of the impact it could have on the reader. It is easier to take something from a preacher who you can see does not have it all together either, you can relate to him...and maybe that is why the author chose to do it that way. Maybe he was mocking the whole idea, as in these are they only type of people who can afford to mope around and recite little prayers....who knows what he meant to do...I do know what I got from it though. You really need to read it, to know what I mean by not knowing what you get from it after reading it...I think the conclusion could be different for almost every reader. Give this one a shot!!
Review Summary: Franny and Zooey: A Love Story.
Review: Over the years, I have grown to appreciate J. D. Salinger's 1961 novel, Franny and Zooey, more than his better-known cult classic, The Catcher in the Rye (1951). A college girlfriend first encouraged me to read the novel ("It's a love story," she said), and a recent French film, Dans Paris (based loosely on the novel), prompted me to read it again. Set in November, 1955, the novel tells the story of Franny and Zooey Glass, two precocious siblings both in their early 20s. The novel is divided into two parts, the first chapter named for "Franny," and the second named for "Zooey." In the first chapter, Franny, an undergraduate at Yale, has become disillusioned with academia, and in the second chapter, Zooey consoles his younger sister with his brotherly love in their parents' Manhattan apartment following her spiritual and existential breakdown at Yale.
The two-part "love story" is narrated by Franny and Zooey's older brother, Buddy Glass. At Yale, we find Franny questioning the value of her college education, re-evaluating her relationship with her boorish boyfriend, Lane Coutell, and reading a small, Russian religious text, The Way of a Pilgrim. While having lunch with Lane, Franny eats nothing, smokes, sweats, feels faint, and then breaks into tears in the restroom. The chapter ends with Franny practicing "the Way of the Pilgrim," praying the "Jesus Prayer" without ceasing, as she leaves in a taxi.
The second chapter picks up the story two days later, after Franny's existential breakdown. Much like Catcher's Holden Caulfield, Franny finds herself at odds with the phoniness of life. As Zooey smokes and reads a four-year-old letter from his brother, Buddy, in the bathtub, Franny mopes on the living room sofa with her cat, Bloomberg. Meanwhile, their mother, Bessie, is preoccupied with her daughter's depression. Franny and Zooey, we learn, are haunted by the suicide of their eldest brother, Seymour, who as his name suggests ("see more"), was the spiritual center of the family. Together they find meaning in words of wisdom he once gave Zooey. The "secret" of Seymour's advice ultimately enlightens Franny, infusing her life with new meaning.
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A book about growing up
Review: I was lent this book by a friend and read it hesitantly, thinking I would be bored by it, but I was not!
This book is a great book about growing up and facing reality. I enjoyed the characters lives and felt for them.
I wish I have read Catcher in the Rye to draw a parallel to this book, but I have not.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Pay attention young writers. Study this book.
Review: Let's face it: if you're only going to write a handful of books in your lifetime, let one of them be The Catcher in the Rye, and let another one be Franny and Zooey. Billed by many critics as two stories I find it more fitting to describe the text as a novella in two parts. One-fifth of the way into Franny and Zooey, the narrator steps directly into the novel to establish, among other things, the narrative contract with the reader. In this section the narrator all but introduces himself as Buddy, the oldest living of the seven children of Bessie and Les Glass. Zooey and Franny Glass are the youngest of these children. This lucid contract with the reader belies the narrative complexities of the novella. The final scene of Franny and Zooey, while the siblings speak to each other on separate phone lines just one room away from each other, is one of my favorite, and one of the most moving scenes in all of literature.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: One of the Best Ever
Review: This book is great. Salinger's writing is beautiful. His characters are interesting, intricate, human, and often intense. He doesn't need crazy action sequences or ballyhoo. His characters merely converse with each other, and yet his book is more engaging than almost any action novel, and it is certainly more thought provoking.
This book has changed me. It didn't change my life in any dramatic or wild way, but, having read it, I am now subtly different. For one, I realized that I had slipped into some of the dubious thinking that Zooey describes in the book. Second, I now view literature in a slightly different light. This book certainly stands out in the crowd. Finally, I feel inspired by this book's high quality - I feel slightly elevated. This probably doesn't make sense to you, who are reading this review. Maybe it will after you read the book.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book, although I still think "Catcher in the Rye" is better.
Finally, if you have read The Bible and a little of Epictetus' work, then you'll appreciate certain passages of "Franny and Zooey" a bit more.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: I had no idea what I was missing!
Review: I read this book with my book club this month, and I was blown away! I had no idea what I was missing. I have fallen in love with JD Salinger and since then picked up Nine Stories by him as well. I am taken away when I read him, I can say that I fully enjoy every moment of his writings so far. He is dry, and rough, and very descriptive. If you have only read Catcher in the Rye and think that you don't enjoy Salinger...give Franny and Zooey a try, it will be a breath of fresh air, and make you think too.
I enjoyed the book and the characters and all, but that was completely secondary to what I got out of the book. It is almost like I got what I did despite the fact that the book talks about a group of wonderbread kids who have life so easy that they try and make it complicated. I realised that I did have a hard time tolerating their fainting spells, and when they insulted their mamma and called her fat and such. I began to see them as more spoiled and less actually practising what they knew.
It seems that Salinger could have chosen to use these wealthy, upper class, wonderbreads because of the impact it could have on the reader. It is easier to take something from a preacher who you can see does not have it all together either, you can relate to him...and maybe that is why the author chose to do it that way. Maybe he was mocking the whole idea, as in these are they only type of people who can afford to mope around and recite little prayers....who knows what he meant to do...I do know what I got from it though. You really need to read it, to know what I mean by not knowing what you get from it after reading it...I think the conclusion could be different for almost every reader. Give this one a shot!!