After spending some time browsing at Barnes & Noble yesterday, I picked up Franny and Zooey and ported it to a chair thinking I’d never read it. I got through the Franny story, about a quarter into the whole thing, decided I’d finish it, and when I looked on Goodreads discovered that I’d already read it and rated it three stars. There’s no date with the rating, but I’m pretty sure it’s been over a year.
The funny thing is that I had no memory of it. As I was reading it at B&N, there were little parts that seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn’t recall any of the plot or the characters. I didn’t even remember that Zooey is Franny’s brother or that they’re Seymour Glass‘s family. (Based on Nine Stories, some of which I read when I was in high school, I romanticized Seymour Glass. Another book I need to reread.)
Which gets me to a general outline of the plot. In the first part, Franny goes out with her boyfriend and they argue about lots of things. She’s all dramatic about a religious book. She gets sick and faints, and the boyfriend is suddenly nicer to her. In the second part, Franny goes home to stay with her brother, Zooey, and her parents. She’s in the middle of a nervous breakdown of sorts, partially over the “Jesus Prayer” in the religious book she’s been carrying around. And then people talk a lot about religion, college, and Franny, and Zooey calls Franny pretending to be another brother, Buddy, and is found out. That’s about it. It’s structured more like a short story than a novel.
I think I liked it better this time than when I read it a year or two ago. I can identify with Franny: when I was her age, around 20, I was a lot like her. Franny and Zooey reminds me that life is much more peaceful now that I’ve grown up a bit.
