Franny & Zooey by J.D. Salinger
At its core: a conversational, existential conversation between two siblings that might be soothing or thought-provoking to you.
Published January 17, 2025



Novel: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Release Date: 1961
Publisher: Little, Brown and Companyf
Format: Paperback
Source: Bought
"Everything everybody does is so—I don't know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way."
A novel in two halves, Franny and Zooey brilliantly captures the emotional strains and traumas of entering adulthood. It is a gleaming example of the wit, precision, and poignancy that have made J. D. Salinger one of America's most beloved writers.
Why I Picked It Up
About two months ago, I read Good Old Neon, a short story by David Foster Wallace, because I'd been working my way through a list of favorite books given to me by someone I was getting to know. The existential crisis at the (sad) story's core struck me as very similar to Franny and Zooey, which I read in high school:
How genuine are we? Any of us? Can you do anything good without it being selfish by making you feel good? What if you're secretly a fraud? Those familiar with Salinger will recognize that particular emphasis—that of everyone being a phony, your own self not exempt. Fake, hypocritical, shallow. How do you get out of that and start to take things at face value again? How do you stop thinking yourself in circles?
(And I did totally agree with Franny re: bohemia being just as similar. Cynicism to popular culture is just as bad as conformity! Which, for the record, is why I have a hard time grappling with Beat Generation writers. So how do you navigate anything, and what is most authentic?)
Reading It Then
I encountered Franny and Zooey for the first time actually in Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, a funny Christmastime YA adventure written by one of my favorite authors, thinkers, and editors—David Levithan. Everything he touches seems to articulate my baseline thoughts in an unforeseen way, balancing depth with accessibility.
In high school, I ran a classics book club for teenagers at a local independent bookstore, and so I chose to read this one.
Salinger is conversational and associative—loose and quick—in a way that makes him an especially great classics pick for high schoolers. I've been citing this book since age 17, but hadn't revisited it until (oh God) a full decade later.
Reading It Now
I think this book deals really well with the trap of awareness and the particular stage of disillusionment when you feel detached from seeing anything as authentic. When you know just enough to falter. It strikes differently in my late 20s.
I'm a self-described optimist, but I do have my moments of cynicism, and I know right now is when so many friends and loved ones are tired or moving or unsure, and people are sort of realizing that we can all be a little hypocritical as we grow, and we might be suddenly changing our minds about what exactly we want, which might make us feel dissonant. I've thought a lot lately about how conflicting truths can coexist.
Anyway, Good Old Neon reminded me to read this one, so Franny and Zooey sat on my bedside table for a while. Franny and Zooey is a conversational read, so I knew it'd take me maybe two hours total to knock out—a good hammock afternoon sesh between work tasks. (I'm a scarily fast reader.)
It makes a quicker win than most classics if you crave the feeling of "finishing" something. Salinger's rambling and reliance on dialogue makes him an excellent entry-level (I mean that in terms of clarity, not quality) classics writer to read. It's less than 200 pages, much of which is dialogue.
I Went Into This Book Thinking About—
- How hypocrisy might actually be good (or at least natural) as we evolve. There's probably a gap between awareness of your existing framework and your leap into a new one, where you know what you believe now but can't quite get yourself there.
- How much going deep means going inward. Which is great, yeah, but a lot of people can get trapped in the isolated spiral of confusion. I've done this all before and usually the answer, for me, is to try to think less, allow truths to exist in contradiction, and find whatever methods help me go beyond myself again. I love philosophy and existentialism and all, but an important part of considering it also seems to be knowing when to let it go.
- How our modern, affected panopticon culture on the Internet has affected our willingness to explore new ideas—because we're not allowing people to change their minds without gleefully judging them for it. And that's probably a cultural net-negative. There's a difference between holding people accountable and this sort of posturing, I think.
What It's About
Franny and Zooey is fundamentally about hypocrisy and how empty noticing it—especially within yourself—can make you feel.
Once you stop seeing your surroundings as authentic, it takes a lot (perhaps forced intervention) to claw your way out.
“'I do like him. I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect...Would you excuse me for a minute?'”
The book is technically two short stories stitched together, but I've always described it as one long conversation. 20-year-old Franny falls apart in reaction to a religious book about a pilgrim exploring what "pray without ceasing" means, and how literally to take the concept of belief itself when there are so many different options and contradictions within it. How do you decide what to believe?
The first half depicts her exhausted, trying to explain her disillusion to her Yalie boyfriend, Lane; the second half features her bitter brother Zooey talking her down while she recovers on the couch at their family home. Eventually, they get to the point the book's always been "about" to me—how hypocritical the pursuit of goodness feels.
I misremembered the book as specifically talking mostly about doing good and charity. That was part of the conversation, but this time around, I understood it more as an analysis of how to handle actions that don't match words. Whether or not people believe what they're saying. What to aim for.
- If goodness makes you feel good, isn't that selfish?
- Isn't calling everything else shallow is just as bad as whatever shallowness you're critiquing?
- Can existentialism ever lead to happiness? How aware should you be?
“'As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure — or even intellectual treasure — and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure.'”
In the book, Franny and Zooey discuss their frustration in how they've been raised with a very broad worldview and exposed to every belief system possible. Their wide philosophical education was a noble effort by their older siblings to give them a lot to choose from and individual perspective, but instead made them dissonant. The world feels loud and superficial, and they feel burdened by their lack of clarity, which makes them withdraw. Wouldn't it have been better to just not know?
“'Why are you breaking down, incidentally? I mean if you're able to go into a collapse with all your might, why can't you use the same energy to stay well and busy?'”
Franny searches for something "pure"—beyond ego, beyond pretense—but doesn't know if she can ever find it. She suddenly feels out of step with the world and the others around her in her attempt. Zooey, someone raised with the same, can coax her out of it, but he's largely turned bitter instead.
Zooey's not very nice, either. He doesn't sugarcoat anything, and his way of helping her is largely guiding her to her own answers (and emphasizing that nobody else can give them to her), rather than anything easy.
“'You can go on like this all day, but I can't,' [Franny] said. "All I am is on the receiving end. It isn't terribly pleasant, you know. You think everyone's made of iron or something.'”
So, even getting her closer to reality again, Zooey's intervention feels painful and shatters her some. In some ways, the complexity of her crisis can only be ironed out by the reassurance of someone else, but the process itself is definitely frustrating because it's still about her as an individual coming up with a path forward that she can live with. Zooey can help, but at the end of the day, it's up to Franny to decide what she wants and how to view the world around her. Generously, or cynically?
Franny and Zooey's not a tidy book, and it doesn't necessarily offer solutions, but it does give quiet glimmers of hope and companionship that comfort me. Finding the meaning in the mess is chaotic, but you also don't have to do it alone, and that's fleshed out this half-baked idea of mine lately that love and understanding aren't as synonymous as I once thought they were.
A Tangent Re: My Current View of Religion (Relevant to the Book, I Promise—)
I don't necessarily talk about my religious beliefs on here unless they're relevant to the convo (which they are, in this case.) I personally think God (and any higher power) and Nature and love and resonance are all roughly the same.
I'm Episcopalian and enjoy the structure and ritual, but believe that my religious beliefs coexist with literally everything else.
It doesn't bother me to encounter any other POV, nor do I think they're wrong, because I think it's 1) all personal and individual unless you need to seek solace within a religious community to express your beliefs and 2) if you harbor the comfort within the idea of God that I personally feel, you believe that everyone was created to be exactly how they are, free will included, but that it's all coherent and meaningful within the big picture or else it wouldn't exist within the universe. That sounds corny, but nobody can ever really be incorrect in their perspective even if you see it as dissonant—because they're acting in alignment with their system, which was created by nature? (Not to get too abstract here.)
I also think we are always changing what exactly we believe and the format itself doesn't entirely matter because it comes out in the wash. You're just deciding what system gives you peace within your daily life. Be kind! Respect others! You're never better than anyone else, and we all value different things anyway.
For me, my religion is private. I don't really attend church regularly nowadays because I'm a tired gal and God understands me needing to sleep in. He wouldn't have made me the way that I am if not. Belief is more of a subtle undercurrent to my reality than a constant, objective voice; I wouldn't say "God put it on my heart to [insert action here]" but I respect that some people feel compelled to phrase it that way.
I don't expect anyone in my life to share my belief in religion, but I do appreciate being able to talk about belief as a concept because I want people to believe that what they do matters no matter what framework they slot that desire into. (I mean, if you believe in God—or my idea of it—you also think he created nihilism too?) But I won't push anyone into what I believe. For me, it's just important that the people I surround myself with try to be kind and understanding and do whatever they think the "right" thing is even if they're constantly redefining what that means, and I want to be able to comfort them in crises. Religion may be a tool for that in some cases; it may not be.
I think most religious rules, on the other hand, are historically just related to power. Language is inherently an imperfect vehicle and each word (and sequence of them) bounces off of thousands of contextual associative memories within each person, and many religious texts have been exposed to thousands of years' worth of Telephone. The Bible also tells us not to cut our hair, but that doesn't mean you're skipping the salon? I'm inclined to believe that as soon as human judgment enters the picture, wielding religion is more so used to establish authority or perpetuate existing imbalances, which is why so many people get frustrated with religious justification.
So I feel fine and healthy critiquing religion and those who cite it in ways I disagree with without feeling like it degrades my own beliefs at all. Some of the use of religion—for hate, exclusion, etc,.—is very human in a way I think isn't actually religious at all.
So I guess: God is real to me, but organized religion has its pros and cons. Whatever makes you feel best is fair to you, but people have the right to push back on you when you impose it on others.
I do take the Stoic position on matters like these: I can only ever align with what I believe is right. I'm never more "correct" or "better" than someone else. If I succeed in moving someone towards my beliefs (consciously or not), great! Nature intended it to happen. If not, I don't have the full picture of what their belief system is contributing to, and I'm one of many operating in the best way I know how to. I really do believe it's all part of the same system.
I believe in psychology and evolution and indigenous beliefs and that it's all roughly the same attempt at organization and meaning—that everyone just tries to feel resonant and unified, that whatever they do is in accordance with their values. Religion is a helpful vehicle for that alignment because it offers a code and community to follow and develop that makes it a little easier to decide what works and what doesn't. But at the end of the day, it's all about whatever gives you that comfort, so it's not very useful to force it.
You could come to me at any point and explain why you disagree and change my mind, and even changing my mind would be natural. I think we just get defensive about our choices because we're afraid of being seen as incompetent.
My exact phrasing of this whole perspective is based on my current one too: me, bug-bitten, at my bistro table, woozy from a slight cold, informed by my past months and reads and considerations, a little hungry. I can know what I think in a given moment based on analyzing patterns and hindsight for meaning, but I could also wake up tomorrow feeling differently, and my consistency is based in the act of believing anything whatsoever at all.
I'd maybe write it differently another day, but I'm writing it now with thousands of influences converging in a singular moment, which I've decided to call a result of God, Nature, love, resonance, grace, purpose, whatever force gets me to put a pen to paper (and then type it up.)
This is my act of prayer, my "pray without ceasing" heartbeat propelling me in accordance with whatever is most Grace-ful, and in moments like this, I'm very grateful to be as specific as I am in my "strong sense of self" because it does feel good and right and unified. But if I had an existential crisis, there would probably some reason for it or some transformation that needed to happen.
And personally, I do love some overt displays of religion too: the tangible kindness at my Christian summer camp, Love Poems from God translated by Daniel Ladinsky, the community of a bible study on occasion, the gorgeous candlelit choirs of a Christmas Eve church service, etc,. But I don't think I need them in order to believe how I do.
What I Loved Most About the Book (& Picked Up This Time)
I've always loved how natural and all-over-the-place the siblings' conversation was. When I first read this book in high school, I hadn't read anything like it, and could understand how well it reflected the chaos of this sort of coming-of-age shift.
Salinger's style can be rambling, like I said. He goes into exhaustive detail about details of room decor, for example, but sparse in other descriptions. He loves to italicize for emphasis, which I normally find sloppy, but is a hallmark of his style. He's a little weird, which I love, and doesn't spoon-feed you the references his characters make (which I do appreciate, because that does feel like you're a fly on the wall. People don't explain everything in reality the way they do in fiction. You're dropped in.)
Also, confession: I do love The Catcher in the Rye. Pretention for others' sake is annoying, of course, but sometimes people just come off as pretentious, and I feel a lot of sympathy for Holden! All of us can come across as affected or cynical in various ways, and he's a complex character afraid of being let down by sincerity (just like the rest of us.) If you're judging his tendency to judge, well. You might be flattening him too. People are always contradicting themselves.
In Franny and Zooey, you can go in having read the other companion books by Salinger focused on other siblings or know nothing. I have his other books on my shelf, but have never read them, so I know very little. But it's quickly established that Seymour's committed suicide, that Franny picked up the book sparking her crisis off his desk, and that she secretly longs to talk to him about it. So I picked up on the undercurrent of grief more this time. The discussion shifts more into the mourning for her lost connection—a reminder that she doesn't have the opportunity to talk to her dead brother about the book or the questions he left her saddled with.
And you can read the book through a prevention lens: each Glass child sees the world very seriously, and two of them have died (one by suicide.) So was that individual weight and sense of responsibility to absorb knowledge even a good thing? Franny and Zooey both feel a little fucked up because of their exposure to so much. Maybe it would have been better to know less, because consolidating and shifting and deciding what to think as a singular person is both isolating and overwhelming. Can you ever find a "pure" truth and understanding?
Zooey treats Mrs. Glass like she's stupid. He's mean to her (which I hate.) But the subtext in adulthood I picked up on is that Mrs. Glass and Zooey are both aware of how easily Franny can tip over into wanting to kill herself too. Her depression could lead to a similar outcome. Zooey's solved his worries by hardening entirely, while Mrs. Glass just accepts their constant derision and treats all her children gently anyway, even when they don't necessarily "deserve" softness.
This time, my favorite line was from Zooey about the divinity of small kindnesses and the relief of having others care, even if you have to muscle through it alone. How being too internal can isolate and blind you. (Good Old Neon expressed this same concern—that questioning yourself is inherently a little self-absorbed.)
“'If it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're missing out on every single goddamn religious action that's going on around this house. You don't even have sense enough to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup... How in hell are you going to recognise a legitimate holy man when you see one, if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?'”
And that's sort of how my own existential questions resolve. There's a depth to the questions and confusions, especially when so much might be changing at once, but it's tempered by an awareness of beauty and the gratitude for the attempts at resolution, however imperfect they might be. Everyone's just doing their best, and I genuinely believe that. Hopefully, I always will.
Overall, I'd recommend the book to anyone curious about these types of questions, anyone who struggles to feel like whatever they're doing matters, anyone who wonders how genuine they are, fans of Salinger, etc,. It's a coming-of-age in all senses of the word.
For fans of:
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Marukami; Good Old Neon (story) by David Foster Wallace; The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger; lowkey, that Season 2 Euphoria (TV) episode of Ali and Rue in the diner.


I frequently say that free speech does not excuse you from the consequences of said speech, so I don't mean this in a "you're exempt from being held accountable for hateful speech" way. Rather, I think that this panopticon culture forces people into the defensive, which then makes everyone double-down and avoid dissenting ideas entirely. Everyone loves complains about polarization and modern distance, but we're also always throwing peoples' previous stances or opinions in their faces as a sort of "gotcha!" without acknowledging that people learn and change their minds. If we want people to be open to new perspectives, we have to actually allow people to change their minds without constantly using that change against them.
I've noticed "fundamentally" is my new word. I've been using it constantly.