Franny and Zooey is about the Glass family. The book is filled with long letters the characters write to one another and these lengthy deep conversations about concepts like religion and philosophy. The Glass family is a prestigious family in intellect, show, and talent. The book is split up into two parts, part Franny, and part Zooey. In part Franny, we are introduced to Franny Glass, the youngest of the Glass family and an up-and-coming actor who has just landed a main role in her college play. She meets her boyfriend, Lane by train and they reckon for martinis before the football game that night. Over the course of the meal, Franny gets noticeably more disrupted. She turns pale, won’t touch her food, and keeps on getting up to go to the restroom. Her breakdown climaxes when she admits to quitting her prestigious acting gig and rants about her struggles of the disingenuousness of college and passes out. In part two we meet Zooey, a prodigy of intelligence and an established actor. A few days after part one Zooey meets Franny in the Glass household. They blossom into a mighty conversation about spirituality resulting in Franny coming to terms with the “phoniness” of this world and resolving her mental crisis. While I enjoyed what I could from this book, I frankly feel like a lot of it went over my head. The themes of extraordinary intelligence or spirituality are very foreign to my own experiences in life so I feel like I couldn’t quite grasp the content as much as I’d like to. The language and themes are very pretentious in this read and I feel like I ought to revisit this book once again in the future to fully appreciate it. If you want a challenge or enjoy deeper discussions, I recommend Franny and Zooey.
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