Franny and Zooey serves as a fine example of Salinger's penchant for placing the importance of characterization before that of plot. The entire novel takes place over a few hours on two different days and correspondingly is structured in two uneven sections. The stand-alone quality of the two sections is due to the fact that "Franny" first appeared as a short story in The New Yorker in 1955, while "Zooey" appeared in the same publication in 1957.

The names of the two sections correspond to the names of the two main characters. Salinger apparently incorporates some autobiographical features into Franny and Zooey, but it should not be termed a "memoir". The introduction in the novel's second part of its apparent narrator, Buddy, and his subsequent disappearance as a named presence in the novel is a type of narrative experimentation. The success of that experiment remains a subject of debate for...