Franny and Zooey and Me: The Mystical Writings of J.D.

Salinger

Laura Michetti
 “Sing to me oh muse, of a man.”
-Homer, The Odyssey

That the second oldest piece of Western literature begins with an invocation could be interpreted

as poetic coincidence- a trivial formality owing to the customs and superstitions of a man immersed in

a world haunted by mythic sensibility. But if one were so inclined to give at least a modicum of credit

to Homer- if not our first, certainly our most highly regarded dead poet- then it would be safe to assume

that no line of the Odyssey or the Iliad was written in coincidence. Incidentally I am inclined toward

the latter and thus find it increasingly interesting that from its very origins, Western literature has been

inextricably linked to god.

Nearly three millennia after Homer's time and halfway around the world from his own lands,

the literary climate is not so vastly different. In his essay 'J.D. Salinger: Writing as Religion', Dennis

O'Connor points out that, “From the time of Emerson, Thoreau, and the transcendentalists, through

Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Thomas Merton, a strong religious tradition has flourished

among American writers. These writers were captivated by Eastern religions and their notions of the

nature of man's spirituality.” 1 According to O'Connor- and no doubt countless others- J.D. Salinger was

not simply another branch on this noble family tree, but indeed its crowning glory. What was different

about Salinger that distinguished him from a literary tradition that was already spilling over with

religiosity, idealism, and renown?

It is my belief that J.D. Salinger was a mystic first, and a writer second. Or perhaps more

accurately, that Salinger's writing was secondary to, substantiating and supporting of, and likely even a

devotional practice for, the realization of his spiritual ambitions. Furthermore, there is evidence (if one

reads closely enough) that Salinger sought not only his own enlightenment through his literary

meditations, but in the tradition of the Eastern religions he so highly regarded, Salinger labored to craft

1 O'Connor, 9.
works of art that could liberate his readers as well.

It is my hope that the hermeneutical study that follows will shine some much needed light on

the potency of Salinger's work when it is regarded as a mystical path in its own right. As such,

Salinger's writing is dense, obscure, and sometimes altogether nonsensical, but it is these very

characteristics that define it as a worthy path. It is indeed the most precious of life's teachings that have

forever been cloaked in esoteric mystery. Would it not be a great shame to ignore the call to spiritual

discovery that was Salinger's life and work on account of its apparent impenetrability? O'Connor

describes how, “variously ridiculed as a "recluse," a self-indulgent narcissist resorting to Greta Garbo-

ish ploys to gain attention, Salinger, in fact, approaches writing more as a religion than as a

profession.”2This describes a common complaint about J.D. Salinger: his reclusive and saturnine nature

as a man must mean that his work is equally intangible and forbidding. I believe this could be no

further from the truth. I believe that Salinger's many years of silence, his elusive character and

insistence on complete privacy, are not indicators of a man who had grown weary of the world and all

its 'phonies'; perhaps I am too generous- sentimental, starstruck- but it occurs to me that Salinger, like

any true spiritual guide, stepped out of the limelight in hopes that we might turn away from the

Salingers and Eliots of the outer world and instead venture inward to discover the Glasses and

Caulfields within.

On hermeneutics and mysticism, briefly.

The relationship between God and the written word is enigmatic and enduring. In a sort of

dependent co-arising the ineffability of the divine seems to have compelled humanity towards literary

writing while at the same time writing (particularly in the form of story and myth) appears to have

provided an ontological structure for consciousness- a mental framework within which a conception of

the divine could take shape and flourish. In the earliest religions and mythologies we find ample

2 O'Connor, 2.
evidence for this entangled origin from which God and writing sprang forth, expanding in divergent

directions while still united at the source. From Homer's invocation of the muses and the Platonic

conception of the logos to the Vedic belief in divinely revealed knowledge and the biblical creation of

the world by the word of God, there is significant historical grounds for connecting the divine with

speech and writing. It is no surprise then that mysticism has often been understood as a form of

hermeneutics: a way of experiencing and interpreting scripture that leads one to direct contact with the

divine.

But in the case of Salinger are we not stretching the definitions of both mysticism and

hermeneutics a bit far? Is it sensible to approach his work with the devotional sensitivity of a monk or

nun contemplating the scriptures of their tradition? What then happens to the author, to Salinger the

man, if his work is expected to provide either knowledge of the divine or liberation from it? The

answers to these questions are not to be found within his writings; Salinger himself wrestled with these

concerns through the intense relationships that his characters had with each other, with the world, and

with the unknown. Salinger seemed no more sure of his own role as writer then he did of ours as

reader, and yet the pressing awareness that we are, all of us, jivamuktis, sharing in the experience of

spiritual awakening is the distinguishing characteristic of Salinger's entire authorship. And perhaps this

is precisely what classifies Salinger as a mystic: it is the nature of a holy man to point the way down a

well trodden path toward spiritual exaltation, but it is the mystic whose blazing trail diverges off the

beaten path that awakens a passionate curiosity in others, inspiring and allowing them to discover their

own uniquely illumined way home.

It is easy enough to link Salinger and his stories with the long standing tradition of mystical

writing- indeed he makes the connection for us. His 1961 short story Zooey begins with an

introduction of sorts wherein the narrator defends his case for writing the story at all and makes an

effort to distinguish between mysticism (or what he calls religious mystification) and love:

It's the leading man, however, who has made the most eloquent appeal to me to call off
 the whole production. He feels that the plot hinges on mysticism, or religious
mystification – in any case, he makes it very clear, a too vividly apparent transcendent
element of sorts, which he says he's worried can only expedite, move up, the day and
hour of my professional undoing.3

Our narrator goes on to assert that his own personal strength is in knowing “the difference between a

mystical story and a love story”, concluding that “I say my current offering isn't a mystical story, or a

religiously mystifying story, at all. I say it's a compound, or multiple, love story, pure and

complicated.”4 There is no mistaking that both stories, Franny and Zooey, are entirely mystical. The

spiritual content and repetitive mantra-like dialogues between the characters, as well as the long-

winded expositions about human suffering, intimate that there is a spiritual subtext to the story. That

Buddy Glass informs us first thing that it is a love story says something about the relationship between

love and mystical experiences- that perhaps what we understand or presume mysticism to be is really

just love ‘pure and complicated’.

On authorship and ambiguity.

One need look just a bit further into Salinger's writings to discover if not an oracle of answers at

the very least a comrade in suffering. Indeed, the larger-than-life characters that inhabit the short stories

of the Glass family, the novel The Catcher in the Rye, and his extended collected works, are each in

their own way companions on our journey toward spiritual liberation. Embodied consciousnesses,

Franny and Zooey, Buddy and Seymour among the others, are like psychological looking glasses,

reminders of who we are and what we can become in the face of both our loss of divine union but also

in our desperate return to it.

Among the many literary devices used by Salinger that might suggest a deeper, more mystical

message in his works, the one that is used most surreptitiously is that of ambiguous identities.

Salinger's refusal to draw and adhere to strict character outlines draws the reader's attention beyond the

3 Salinger, Zooey, 48.

4 Ibid. 49.
identity of a particular individual character and into the inner world of a spiritual being. Most often

these transitory identities belong to Buddy Glass, the self-proclaimed narrator of the Glass family

stories, and Seymour Glass, the martyred elder brother who through both his life and suicide takes on

the role of spiritual luminary for the Glass family. In the introductory paragraphs to the short story

Zooey, Salinger presents the complexities of authorship:

In just a moment the youngest Glass boy will be seen reading an exceedingly lengthy
letter (which will be reprinted here in full, I can safely promise) sent to him by his eldest
living brother, Buddy Glass. The style of the letter, I'm told, bears a considerably more
than passing resemblance to the style, or written mannerisms, of this narrator, and the
general reader will no doubt jump to the heady conclusion that the writer of the letter
and I are one and the same person. Jump her will, and, I'm afraid, jump he should. 5

In this muddling of identities we see how “the craft of story writing moves away from the external

world and into intense interior meditation on the process of writing itself. This narcissistic

interiorisation is also the method recommended by Yoga for spiritual aspirants...” 6 A devoted follower

of the eastern tradition of Advaita Vedanta, Salinger's use of literary devices that reflect spiritual

practice is not merely coincidental; writing was his yoga.

There is no better place to explore Salinger's spiritual narrative than in his short story Seymour:

an Introduction. Seymour begins with two quotes, one from Kafka the other Kierkegaard, who are

among the “notorious sick men” that the narrator, Buddy Glass, turns to when he wants “perfectly

credible information about modern artistic processes” 7 The quote from Kierkegaard is profoundly

revealing:

It is (to describe it figuratively) as if an author were to make a slip of the pen, and as if
this clerical error became conscious of being such. Perhaps this was no error but in a far
higher sense was an essential part of the whole exposition. It is, then, as if this clerical
error were to revolt against the author, out of hatred for him, were to forbid him to
correct it, and were to say, “No, I will not be erased, I will stand as a witness against
thee, that thou art a very poor writer.”8

5 Salinger, Zooey, 50.

6 Pattanaik, 14.
7 Salinger, Seymour, 101.
8 Ibid. 95.
If we are to imagine the potential for a 'slip of the pen' to become conscious of itself, what must

Salinger want us to imagine about characters who are crafted with intention, dignity, histories all their

own, spiritual longings, and even deep despair and sorrow? Will they, too, suddenly become conscious

of themselves as such? The eastern tradition Advaita Vedanta describes the relationship between

individual souls and the ultimate, non-dual soul of Brahman as similar to that of a dreamed character

within a dreamers mind. The dreamed character enjoys no identity outside of the dreamers mind but the

dreamer itself is unaffected by the experiences of the dream character. Playing on this metaphor,

Salinger's use of this particular quote invites speculation about the origins of consciousness within the

written word. The writer and the reader are equally responsible for the birth of literary consciousness.

Indeed, the omnipresence of the reader is referred to frequently throughout Seymour, most often

as a source of discomfort for Buddy the narrator. Throughout the text Buddy addresses us directly,

offers bouquets of 'early-blooming parentheses'9, promises to point out 'available exits' for certain

'classical' types of readers10, envies our 'golden silence', and even admits that “this composition has

never been in more imminent danger than right now of taking on precisely the informality of

underwear.”11 Buddy's transparent consciousness can prove difficult to follow at times with run on

sentences and emotive exclamations galore, but the overall effect is one of interiority, of being

welcomed into the private world of a contemporary seer. Buddy explains, “Isn't the true poet or painter

a seer? Isn't he, actually, the only seer we have on earth?.. In a seer what part of the human anatomy

would be required to take the most abuse? The eyes, certainly.” By drawing our attention to the eyes

Buddy reminds us of ourselves, the reader, whose eyes bare witness to the varied layers of the world

through the written word. Salinger litters his Glass family stories, gratuitously, with fully reproduced

letters from one family member to another, forcing us to read along with the characters, blurring the

lines and deepening the bond between us and them. This mystical union of reader, writer, and written is

9 Salinger, Seymour, 98.

10 Ibid. 100.
11 Ibid. 150.
one of the most unique and striking characteristics of Salinger's writing.

On Language.

Another unique strength (or weakness, according to some critics 12) of Salinger's writing style is

his daring commitment to authentic (however convoluted) dialogue, so much so that the various forms

of discussion can be seen as a literary device all their own. According to Pattanaik,

From Holden's slang, signifying a language of mass consumption, there is movement

towards a solipsistic voice-a voice that is often a monologue (Buddy's), confiding secret
(Seymour's letter) offering an advice (Zooey's advice to Franny) or speaking to and
about itself (Buddy as an artist talking about the intricacies of writing a fiction)-almost a
voice of the monastery.13

It is as though Salinger's corpus can be read as a memoir detailing the evolution of his own spiritual

consciousness, beginning with the existential malaise that characterizes Holden Caulfield in Catcher to

the lucid and vibratory writings of the child Seymour in Salinger's final publication Hapworth 16,

1924. One can't help but notice how, as O'Connor points out, with the beginning publications of the

Glass family stories, “Salinger steps aways from conventional plot toward a self- reflexive spiral more

suitable to the portrayal of a spiritual quest.”14 His commitment to story telling is a formal invitation for

us to embark on this quest at his side.

The dialogue form that characterizes Salinger's work is exemplified in the short stories Franny

and Zooey. Both stories are dominated by conversations between Zooey and Bessie, Franny and Lane,

Zooey and Franny, and each of the siblings in conversation with the ghosts of their older brothers, one,

Seymour, dead from suicide (the subject of Salinger's short A perfect Day for Bananafish) and the other

our familiar narrator Buddy, who has intentionally exiled himself from family and worldly life.

Incidentally Buddy is described as a writer holed up in a cabin in the woods with no phone or

12 For one infamous critique see John Updike's 'Anxious Days for the Glass Family' review of Franny and Zooey, the New
York Times, September 17, 1961.
13 Pattanaik, 8.
14 O'Connor, 6.
electricity (remarkably reminiscent of Salinger himself who wrote dutifully from morning until night in

a concrete cabin behind his house which had no phone and was strictly off-limits to visitors, including

his wife.)15 We can assume that Buddy, like Salinger, 'approaches writing more as a religion than as a

profession.'

In both religious and professional pursuits the language one uses is an important indicator of

intention and direction. O'Connor tells how “the dazzling verbal surfaces of Salinger's stories are

deceptively colloquial and American. Yet, they lead us to an understanding of an alternative perception

of the universe that welcomes all experience as divine gift.” 16 But even despite their colloquial

informalities, Salinger's linguistic choices carry their own layers of meaning that enrich the overall

tenor of the story. Dipti Pattanaik's essay, “The Holy Refusal”: A Vedantic Interpretation of J.D.

Salinger's Silence, offers an enriching perspective:

Though the narcissistic concerns for the craft of fiction runs through the entire body of
Salinger's works, it comes under sharper focus in "Inverted Forest" and "Seymore: An
Introduction." Language, as Holden Caulfield has demonstrated, can be a form of
reality. James Lundquist suggests how Salinger, by using Holden's preference for certain
colloquials and slangs and aversion towards others, shows two sets of realities. We are,
in fact, prisoners of our words. In several of Salinger's stories a character's phoniness or
sincerity can be discerned from the kind of vocabulary he chooses to use. Lane Coutel's
vocabulary for example, reveals his phoniness. Lundquist also compares the art of
Salinger with the linguistic philosophy of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein concludes that
there is no discoverable reality outside language and that the world of facts will eternally
be beyond human cognition for language cannot reach the world of facts. 17

There is a pressing sense of longing in Salinger's writing style that speaks to his awareness of the

severe limitations of the written language to accurately convey the messages and teachings that were so

personally important to him. A writer who is suspicious of language enjoys a particular kind of

suffering through their work.

In Zooey, the reader discovers something of the Glass family's spiritual disposition in the contents

of a letter from Buddy to Zooey that explains why he and Seymour, the two eldest siblings, took it upon
15 Alexander, 188.
16 O'Connor, 9.
17 Pattanaik, 11.
themselves to spiritually mentor their two youngest siblings, Franny and Zooey (who were nearly

twenty years younger). Seymour and Buddy shared the philosophy that, “education by any name would

smell as sweet, and maybe much sweeter, if it didn’t begin with a quest for knowledge at all but with a

quest, as Zen would put it, for no-knowledge”18 He explains the point further:

Dr. Suzuki says somewhere that to be in a state of pure consciousness- satori- is to be

with God before he said Let there be light. Seymour and I thought it might be a good
thing to hold back this light from you and Franny (at least as far as we were able)... till
you were both able at least to conceive of a state of being where the mind knows the
source of all light.19

Buddy and Seymour prioritized spiritual teachings over classical literature20 because they sought to

preserve a mystical wonder in their two youngest siblings. And while it is made clear to the reader that

these two young siblings are not at all ordinary (one might venture to say Franny and Zooey are both

genuinely special) the relationship they have with the divine is somehow tainted. Zooey expresses the

feeling that somehow being taught about spirituality and mysticism at such young ages has ruined both

he and Franny- made them into ‘freaks’- and there is the sense that they were both too immature, too

unprepared for the depth of mystical experience that characterized their lives. The combined stories of

Franny and Zooey, detail the consequences of such a cultivated mystical initiation.

A Word about Franny.

In 1961 Franny and Zooey were mass market published as a collection of two short stories- the

first titled Franny and the second titled Zooey- after having been first published separately in The New

Yorker a few years before. By far the most popular of the glass family stories, Franny and Zooey have

enjoyed their popularity as though they were one. There is a culminating intimacy in their tales which

not only offers a great deal of insight toward a mystical reading of Salinger's work as a whole, but also

18 Salinger, Zooey, 65.

19 Ibid.
20 In Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters, Buddy tells the anecdotal story of the 'prose pacifier'. When Franny was ten
months old she was moved into the room shared by Buddy and Seymour in hopes of being protected from a mumps
outbreak in the house. During a particularly fitful night of crying, Seymour elects to read the baby Franny a Taoist
parable rather than a children's story, assuring Buddy that it was fine because “They have ears. They can hear.”
raises some pertinent concerns regarding the politics of mysticism.

Franny and Zooey are the youngest of the Glass children; at the time of the stories Franny is

twenty years old and Zooey is twenty five. The general plot of the two stories is that Franny is in the

midst of a spiritual crisis and Zooey attempts (at first very unsuccessfully, but later, perhaps

successfully) to guide her through this dark night of the soul in which we the readers come to know her.

The first story, Franny, takes place basically in a restaurant with Franny and her collegiate boyfriend

Lane Coutel sitting in a booth discussing literature and college. Franny’s spiritual malaise seems to be

manifesting with symptoms of negativity, contrariness, and physical illness but Lane seems too

wrapped up in himself to really notice the weight and depth of her experience. Franny ends with

Franny fainting thus ruining her weekend vacation with Lane.

Zooey takes place entirely within the Glass residence. Initially we find ourselves in a bathroom

where Zooey is bathing when Bessie, in exemplar motherly fashion, invades the space determined to

discuss her deep concern for Franny, who having come home from her vacation with Lane, has spent a

number of days crying, refusing food or drink, and lying around the Glass residence in a state of

existential crisis. These two well loved stories detail an important stage in any mystical awakening-

namely, despair, but there is an unsettling gender bias that is palpable in the stories.

Admittedly, Franny is the one mid-crisis and so her affect (fearfulness, weakness, anger) makes

sense in the moment. But it does raise more than a few eyebrows that the female of the story (the baby

of the family, in a long lineage of male spiritual guides complete with the martyred savior Seymour) is

the one having the breakdown at all. Her symptoms (crying, blowing her nose, cuddling with the cat)

are altogether too stereotypically feminine to go unnoticed as such. And Zooey’s persistent judgement

and urge to control are also stereotypically male:

You take a look around your college campus, and the world, and politics, and one
season of summer stock, and you listen to the conversation of a bunch of nitwit college
students, and you decide everything's ego, ego, ego, and the only intelligent thing for a
girl to do is to lie around and shave her head and say the Jesus prayer and beg God for a
 little mystical experience that'll make her nice and happy. 21

From one perspective, Zooey could be seen as upholding patriarchal expectations and regulations about

the hows, who's, whats, and whys of religion, spirituality, and mystical experiences- especially for

those at all inclined toward feminist thinking. But I want to give Salinger more credit than that.

I believe that Salinger was more than a product of patriarchal culture (indeed we tend to think of

him as a creator of culture, a narrator of inner cultures that had before him remained silent) and from

this perspective, Franny and Zooey are in all of us. From day to day, week to week, mystical moment to

mystical moment, we spiritual beings are always changing from Franny to Zooey- always scared to

death of the divine when it shows itself to us, and then when the threat is over we commit ourselves to

rationalizing it away. Somehow it is in their dynamism- in the willingness of a brother to fumble

desperately just to be present to the pain and confusion that his sister is experiencing and the

willingness of a sister to listen wholeheartedly to the chastising of her brother in a desperate attempt to

connect with something in the here and now; their connection provides a sense of participation- that

even if we don’t understand the mystical, the spiritual, the divine, we are at the very least not alone.

Eventually Zooey does bring Franny a sense of peace- but only once he determines to meet her a

little more halfway:

I'll tell you one thing, Franny. One thing I know. And don't get upset. It isn't anything
bad. But if it's the religious life you want, you ought to know right now that you're
missing out on every single goddam 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- which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to
anybody around this madhouse. So just tell me, tell me buddy. Even if you went out and
searched the whole world for a master – some guru, some holy man-- to tell you how to
say your Jesus prayer properly, what good would it do you? How in hell are you going
to recognize 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?

The story doesn’t really resolve- it ends with Franny staring at the ceiling and smiling before drifting

21 Salinger, Zooey, 166.

off into a dreamless sleep. Maybe its not supposed to resolve- perhaps its beginninglessness and

endlessness is a metaphor- a mirroring of the divine itself- Salinger's way of praying ceaselessly.

On Self-Realization.

The Glass Family (and to a lesser extent Holden Caulfield and Salinger's other characters)

represent the multiplicity of spiritual dispositions that inevitably construct the sorts of mystical

experiences they will have. “Salinger, it seems, is not content with merely depicting social realism in

his novels. He is probably trying through his fiction to communicate epiphanies, the inner reality of

characters, enlightening experiences that occur to an expanded consciousness.” 22 But what then are we,

readers, jivamuktis, to make of the seemingly unavoidable consequences of this expanded

consciousness? Seymour resorts to suicide, Franny is left in a sort of spiritual purgatory, Buddy has

withdrawn completely into the the contemplative life, and Zooey is admittedly maladjusted and

neurotic. What is the incessant lure of the mystical path that draws our innocent enough spirits toward

our own potential downfall? There is of course the possibility that Salinger found himself in a similar

existential bind and ceased publishing his work with conscious intention. Pattanaik explains:

The true Vedanton first seeks to perfect the self before using it as the primary instrument
of changing outward society. Salinger's regression into silence may be a reminder of the
primacy of self-realization in this clamorous age of ideologies, revolutions and
upheavals whose effect is as temporary as their promises lofty. Silence as a gesture acts
as a perfect foil for Salinger's art which retreats in order to recover the silence of the
repressed 'other' of our modern civilization.
This perspective is only one potential way of dealing with the profound alteration of consciousness that

occurs on a mystical journey- which could be the reading or writing of a book- but there are other ways

to intuit a path forward, an integration of sorts.

Salinger himself points the way forward at the end of Zooey during Zooey's final push toward

liberating Franny from her despair: “The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can

22 Pattanaik, 6.
do, is act. Act for God, if you want to – be God's actress if you want to. What could be prettier?” 23

Embracing who we are as individual spiritual beings, whether we are writers or poets, actors or

chicken-soup offerers, to be true to our self is to live in the mystical moment that is one human life.

Again, Zooey offers some wisdom: “But most of all, above everything else, who in the Bible besides

Jesus knew-- knew-- that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all

too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look.” 24

23 Salinger, Zooey, 197.

24 Ibid. 170.
 Bibliography

Alexander, Paul. Salinger: A Biography. New York: St. Martins Press, 1999.

O'Connor, Dennis L. 'J.D.Salinger: Writing as Religion'. The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) Vol.4 Spring

1980, pp.182-190

Pattanaik, Dipti. “The Holy Refusal”: A Vedantic Interpretation of J.D. Salinger's Silence'. Melus Vol.

23 No. 2, Varieties of Ethnic Criticism. Summer 1998. pp113-127.

Salinger, J. D. Franny and Zooey. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1961.

---------. Seymour: An Introduction. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1953.