SOURCE: "Franny," in Salinger's Glass Stories as a Composite Novel, The Whitston Publishing Company, 1983, pp. 21-32.

[In the following essay, Alsen notes the similarities between Salinger's "Franny" and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," and asserts that "Franny" signals a new direction for Salinger in terms of thematic and narrative techniques.]

"Franny" was published in January of 1955, nine months before "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters." But it was probably written several years earlier, at a time when the plan of the Glass series had not yet taken shape, for it does not mention Seymour, nor does it mention that Franny's last name is Glass. Also, the story contains two pieces of information that are later contradicted in the story "Zooey" (1957). Franny tells Lane Coutell that she is taking a "Religion Survey" course and that she got the book, The Way of a Pilgrim, out of her college library after her instructor mentioned it to her. But in "Zooey" we learn that Franny had received religious training in Seymour's "home seminars" for many years. It is therefore highly unlikely that she would take an introductory religion course in college. And indeed, in "Zooey" she refers to the course not as a survey but as a "Religion seminar." Moreover, Zooey tells his mother that Franny did not get The Way of a Pilgrim and its sequel The Pilgrim Continued His Way from her college library but from Seymour's room, "where they've been sitting on Seymour's desk for as long as I can remember." And finally, though "Franny" was published in January of 1955, its sequel, "Zooey," gives November of 1955 as the time of the story's action. These discrepancies suggest that Salinger had not yet decided to make Franny a member of the Glass family when he wrote the story.

It is my guess that Franny was written between "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" (1952) and "Teddy" (1953). "De Daumier-Smith" is the first Salinger story that deals with a religious theme, but like "Franny," it develops this theme in terms of Christian ideas and mentions Eastern religions only in passing. From "Teddy" on, however, Eastern philosophy forms the foundation of Salinger's fiction. Thus "Carpenters," published the same year as "Franny," makes no reference to Christian ideas but uses Taoist and Hindu concepts to develop its meaning.

The form of "Franny" also marks it as a transitional story. For one thing, it is more than twice as long as "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," and its structure, while still quite conventional, is not as compact, nor is its language as crisp and concise. "Franny" thus foreshadows the loose style and rambling development of the later Glass stories. But above all, the story's narrative perspective is no longer the objective one of "Banana-fish"; instead it is that of a subjective, omniscient narrator who quite clearly takes sides in the conflict between the two major characters. But before I deal with what "Franny" reveals when it is seen as a reflection of Buddy's development as a writer and of his struggle to understand Seymour, I will present a close reading of the story as a self-contained account.

"Franny" is a textbook example of a well written short story. Structurally, it follows the traditional short story pattern. Its typography establishes five sections: an exposition, a three-part complication, and a brief resolution. These five parts function exactly as textbooks tell us they should function in a typical short story. The content does not present anything unusual, either. The plot consists largely of a conversation between Franny and her boyfriend, Lane Coutell. Their conversation illustrates their lack of true communication and reveals not only an external conflict between the spiritual values of Franny and the material values of Lane but also an internal conflict that Franny experiences. This inner conflict is Franny's struggle to transcend her ego. In the course of the conversation, Franny is sickened by both Lane's and her own self-centeredness. Her frustration about her inability to cope with this problem eventually leads to her physical collapse, and this collapse marks the climax of the story. The resolution shows how Franny plans to cope with her problem in the future.

The exposition initiates the story's external and internal conflicts by showing that there is something wrong in Franny's relationship with Lane. When we first meet Lane Coutell, he is re-reading Franny's last letter while waiting for her in a train station. This letter shows that Franny resents Lane's habit of analyzing everything she says and does. Franny writes: "Let's just try to have a marvellous time this weekend. I mean not try to analyze everything to death for once, if possible, especially me. I love you." After she expresses her irritation with Lane, the "I-love-you" sounds somewhat forced. And indeed, when Franny later talks about this letter to Lane, she admits: "I had to strain to write it." But Franny feels guilty about her negative feelings toward Lane, and for this reason she gives his arm "a special little pressure of simulated affection" and tells him "I've missed you." But then we read: "The words were no sooner out than she realized that she didn't mean them at all. Again with guilt, she took Lane's hand and tightly, warmly laced fingers with him." Franny seems to be forcing herself to like Lane, and this makes us wonder how long she is going to be able to suppress her negative feelings toward him. Thus the exposition foreshadows the open conflict that develops in the complication of the story.

The conversation that forms the bulk of the story takes place at Sickler's Restaurant. As the conversation begins, Lane talks endlessly about a Flaubert paper for which he has received an A. His bragging illustrates the kind of self-centeredness that Franny detests in people. After listening to Lane patiently for a while, Franny finally tries to change the subject by commenting on how she likes her martini and by asking Lane if she can have his martini olive. When Lane fails to see that Franny isn't really interested in his paper, Franny interrupts him again and says that he is "talking like a section man." A section man is a graduate assistant who sometimes takes over a professor's class and tries to impress the undergraduates by disparaging the work of great authors and by "ruining things for people." Franny says about section men: "I'm just so sick of pedants and conceited little tearer-downers I could scream." And then she explains that it isn't just Lane who makes her sick but everybody at college: "It's just that if I'd had any guts at all, I wouldn't have gone back to college at all this year. I don't know. I mean it's all the most incredible farce." What disturbs her most is that "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." The reason why she feels that way is that everybody "wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished, and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting—it is, it is. I don't care what anybody says." Lane can't understand why this bothers Franny. All he cares about is "the possibility that this bug Franny had might bitch up the whole weekend."

While Franny is trying to explain why she is so disgusted by everybody, she also becomes nauseated by her own attitude. When she compares Lane to one of the conceited section men, she feels "equal parts of malice and self-disapproval" and admits that she has "felt so destructive all week." She tries to collect herself by concentrating for a moment on a small blotch of sunshine on the tablecloth. She tunes out Lane and stares at it "with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it." But this attempt to attain detachment fails, and she continues her attacks on people's self-centeredness. As she gets more upset with herself, she begins to lose color in her face and to perspire profusely. Finally she leaves the table, goes to the ladies' room, locks herself into a stall, and cries "for fully five minutes. She cried without trying to suppress any of the noisier manifestations of grief and confusion, with all the convulsive throat sounds that a hysterical child makes. . . ." Franny's grief is about the "sad-making" selfishness in others and in herself.

After her return from the ladies' room, Franny nevertheless continues attacking all the college types who "look like everybody else, and talk and dress like everybody else" and who do little else than brag and try to impress others. She would like to stop her harangue but she is unable to, despite the fact that "it sounded to her cavilling and bitchy, and she felt a wave of self-hatred that, quite literally, made her forehead begin to perspire again, in spite of herself." Franny's self-hatred is a symptom of her inner conflict. She is aware that she is not any better than Lane or anyone else, and she is frustrated about being unable to change her outlook.

The focus of the story shifts when Franny stops her attacks on others and begins to deal with her own shortcomings. She tells Lane that she quit the Theater Department and dropped the lead role in a play because she began to feel "like such a nasty little egomaniac." She explains: "I don't know. It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm. Kissing everybody and wearing their makeup all over the place, and then trying to be horribly natural and friendly when your friends came backstage to see you." And she concludes: "I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else's. . . . Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."

Again Franny is perspiring, and at one point she even feels her forehead to see if she has a fever. She says: "I feel so woozy and funny. I don't know what's the matter with me." This time, Franny's condition is even worse than before she went to the ladies' room, and we expect her to leave the table again to have another cry. But this time she recovers, at least for a while, when Lane shows some concern for her condition and even asks her about a book he had earlier noticed her carrying.

Lane's question "What's the book?" marks the beginning of the story's climactic section. In this part of the conversation, Franny at first seems to feel better because she gets a chance to summarize for Lane the contents of The Way of a Pilgrim, a book by an anonymous Russian mystic which she says a professor had recommended to her. But when she realizes that Lane does not take the book seriously and calls its ideas "mumbo jumbo," Franny's condition gets worse again.

Franny's summary of The Way of a Pilgrim explains how she hopes to resolve her inner conflict and transcend her ego. The core of this book is the Jesus Prayer which Franny sees as the solution to her problems. Franny says about the book: ". . . it starts out with this peasant—the pilgrim—wanting to find out what it means in the Bible when it says you should pray incessantly. You know. Without stopping. In Thessalonians or someplace." After wandering around for some time, the pilgrim finally meets "a starets—some sort of terribly advanced religious person—and the starets tells him about a book called the Philokalia.' Which apparently was written by a group of terribly advanced monks who sort of advocated this incredible method of praying." The text of the prayer is "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me," and "the starets tells the pilgrim that if you keep saying this prayer over and over again—you only have to just do it with your lips at first—then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active . . . and the words get synchronized with the person's heartbeats, and then you're actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean that's the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything's about." And finally, "You get to see God. Something happens in some absolutely nonphysical part of the heart—where the Hindus say that Atman resides, if you ever took any Religion—and you see God, that's all." Franny is fascinated with The Way of a Pilgrim because she wants to change her outlook and she hopes to be able to do that with the help of the Jesus Prayer.

As Franny summarizes The Way of a Pilgrim, Lane is eating his frog legs and makes occasional comments that show his disinterest. Instead of responding to Franny, he tells his frog legs to "hold still," and then he interrupts her twice more. First he says, "I hate to mention it, but I am going to reek of garlic," and then he brings up his Flaubert paper again: "I hope to God we get time over the weekend so that you can take a quick look at this goddam paper I told you about." But Franny is so excited about The Way of a Pilgrim and the Jesus Prayer that she is unaware of Lane's lack of interest and asks: ". . . did you ever hear anything so fascinating in your life, in a way?" Lane finally responds and asks Franny: "You actually believe that stuff, or what?" Franny doesn't give a direct answer but explains that it can't be a coincidence that she keeps "running into that kind of advice—I mean all those really advanced and absolutely unbogus religious persons that keep telling you if you repeat the name of God incessantly, something happens." But Lane's condescending reply is: "What is the result that's supposed to follow? All this synchronization business and mumbo-jumbo. You get heart trouble?"

The climax of the story occurs after it becomes clear to Franny that Lane is indifferent to her profound interest in the Jesus Prayer. She explains to him that the result of the prayer is that "You get to see God" and she admits that she doesn't even know "who or what God is" or even "if He exists." But instead of responding to this, Lane asks: "You want some dessert, or coffee?" And then he looks at his wrist watch and says: "God. We don't have time. We're lucky if we get to the game on time." But he does remember that their conversation about The Way of a Pilgrim isn't quite finished and tries to conclude by saying:

"Well, it's interesting, anyway. All that stuff . . . I don't think you leave any margin for the most elementary psychology. I mean I think all those religious experiences have a very obvious psychological background—you know what I mean. . . . It's interesting, though. I mean you can't deny that. . . . Anyway. Just in case I forgot to mention it. I love you. Did I get around to mentioning that?"

Nauseated by Lane's obtuseness and condescension toward her, Franny gets up to go to the ladies' room once more, but on the way she has to stop and steady herself against the bar. Then she weaves, faints, and collapses.

The story does not offer an explanation of Franny's collapse, but the conversation that leads up to it suggests that it must have something to do with her sudden realization of the profound difference between her own and Lane's values. This realization probably hit her because of the striking contrast between Lane's declaration of "love" and his insensitivity to her spiritual needs. The conflict between her physical attraction to Lane and her spiritual aspirations probably has something to do with why she felt so "woozy and funny" earlier. And her sudden recognition of the crassness of Lane's character is more than she can bear. Her fainting may be due not only to emotional strain but also to her wish to escape from her relationship with Lane and from the world of the Lane Coutells in general. She has apparently recognized the unbridgeable chasm between her own outlook and that of people like Lane. For while she is an idealist who is committed to the spiritual aspects of life, Lane is a materialist who only recognizes the physical dimension and tries to explain away anything spiritual.

Because of Lane's behaviour toward her, Franny withdraws from the physical into the spiritual world. This withdrawal doesn't resolve Franny's external conflict with Lane—after all, Franny never responds to Lane's condescending comments about her beliefs—but it does resolve her internal conflict between the demands of her physical and her spiritual nature. Her conflict with Lane has helped her decide which of these demands she should give in to.

In the resolution of the story, Lane once more reveals his crass materialism and demonstrates that his interest in Franny is chiefly physical. After Franny has been carried to the restaurant manager's office and barely regained consciousness, Lane tells her that they are not going to the football game but that she is to go to her rooming house: "Then maybe after a while, if you get any decent rest, I can get upstairs somehow. I think there is a goddam back staircase. I can find out. . . . You know how long it's been?' Lane said. 'When was that Friday night? Way the hell early last month, wasn't it?' He shook his head. 'That's no good. Too goddam long between drinks. To put it crassly'." Franny doesn't respond to this. Instead she asks for a drink of water. After Lane has gone to get her a drink, she silently says her Jesus Prayer: "Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling. Her lips begin to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move." It becomes clear now that Franny has decided to withdraw from the world. As she explained earlier, the Jesus Prayer is supposed to purify her outlook and give her an absolutely new conception of what everything is about. And maybe it will even allow her "to see God."

Thus the meaning of the story lies in Franny's attempt to use the Jesus Prayer to resolve her spiritual crisis. Her crisis represents the plight of all those whose spiritual aspirations put them in conflict with people who are as crass and self-centered as Lane Coutell. And although we may not be in sympathy with the way in which Franny wants to transcend the world of the Lane Coutells, the story does make us understand why people with spiritual values may wish to escape into mysticism.

Since neither Buddy nor Seymour is mentioned in the story, "Franny" does not seem to shed any light on Buddy's struggle to understand Seymour's legacy. But if we assume that the story was written by Buddy Glass and if we compare "Franny" to the other work that Buddy produced between "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (1948) and the next Glass story, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" (1955), then the story reveals quite a bit about Buddy's development as a writer and about his understanding of Seymour.

In Seymour—An Introduction (1959), Buddy mentions that he is the author of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters." He does not mention any of the nine other stories that Salinger published between "Bananafish" and "Carpenters," but he says that "there's seldom been a time when I haven't written about [Seymour]." He also tells us that some of his readers have asked him "whether a lot of Seymour didn't go into the young leading character of the one novel I've published," and he admits that there is an evanescent quality about the eyes of the "gifted" young boy in "Teddy" that has suggested to at least two members of the Glass family that Buddy was trying "to get at" Seymour's eyes. These statements show that Seymour has been constantly on Buddy's mind but that, during the seven years between "Bananafish" and "Carpenters," he has not been able to write "directly about Seymour." In fact, Buddy says that he has "written and histrionically burned at least a dozen stories or sketches about him since 1948."

Thus "Franny" can be seen as an indirect story about Seymour which shares some elements of form and theme with "Bananafish" and some with the later Glass stories. If we compare "Franny" to "Bananafish," we will find that it develops a similar conflict, ends in a similar resolution, and has a similar conventional structure. And if we compare it to the later parts of the Glass series, we will find that it is the first Glass story to develop a religious theme and that its narrative technique foreshadows the subjectivity and rambling development of the later stories.

Even a casual reader will notice striking thematic similarities between "Franny" and "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." Like the Seymour in "Bananafish," the spiritual Franny is in conflict with materialistic people. Her principal antagonist, Lane Coutell, is much like Muriel because he values appearances more than essences and considers matter rather then spirit to be the ultimate reality. Franny has a very different outlook and can't get along with people like Lane. She therefore tries to withdraw from them. But because her problems are less severe than Seymour's, her withdrawal takes a milder form. Rather than killing herself, she retreats into the Jesus Prayer.

These similarities suggest that since he wrote "Bananafish," Buddy has made very little progress in his understanding of Seymour. After all, he develops Lane Coutell as an utterly repulsive, male version of Muriel and Franny as a very attractive, female version of Seymour. Because he makes us sympathize with Franny's attempt to withdraw from the world of the Lane Coutells, it seems that Buddy still believes that a person who wants to live a spiritual life in America is bound to find himself so hopelessly estranged from other people that he will be forced either into suicide or into some other form of escape. This is a notion which Buddy eventually gives up in the later Glass stories.

While the content of "Franny" suggests that Buddy has not yet learned anything positive from Seymour's suicide, the form of the story shows that he has at least made some progress as a writer. Even though "Franny" is a conventional short story, it is in some respects quite different from "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." In "Bananafish," Buddy is a totally objective narrator who seems to follow Hemingway's iceberg theory according to which the impact of a story comes largely from what is not obvious, from what one has to deduce about the characters' thoughts and feelings by observing the way they act and speak. But in "Franny," Buddy is a subjective, omniscient narrator who tells us what is going on in the minds of both Franny and Lane Coutell. And what he tells us about their thoughts and feelings is designed to make us dislike Lane and sympathize with Franny. Thus its narrative perspective links "Franny" to the later Glass stories which are even more subjective.

But what most clearly shows Buddy's development as a writer is the frankly religious nature of the story. In his "author's formal introduction" to "Zooey," Buddy says that people have already begun to shake their heads about the religious themes in his stories and that his persistence in writing stories of this kind can only expedite the day and hour of his professional undoing. Buddy's awareness that the general public does not like religious fiction suggests that he did not mention the religious nature of Seymour's problems when he wrote "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" because at that time he was still very much concerned with reaching a large audience. But when he wrote "Franny," he had begun to be less interested in pleasing the general reader than in trying to understand the nature of the problems that drove Seymour into suicide, even if he was only able to write about them indirectly by dealing with Franny's very similar problems. This new attitude foreshadows Buddy's later attempts to use the process of writing about Seymour as a way to reach an understanding of his life and death.