SOURCE: "A Cloister of Reality: The Glass Family," in J. D. Salinger, Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1979, pp. 115-50.

In the following excerpt, Lundquist traces the emotional development of the main characters of Franny and Zooey.

The book [Franny and Zooey] actually consists of two long stories put together into what almost, but not quite, becomes a novel. An abrupt shift in narrative technique from omniscient point of view in the first story (originally published in The New Yorker, 29 January 1955) to having Buddy serve as the narrator in the second (also published in The New Yorker, 4 May 1957) gives the book an awkward structure. But despite the narrative shift, the two stories are best considered as one unit, not only because the second story serves to resolve the first, but also because the two of them taken together mark an essential change in Salinger's fiction. Through his use of the...