The novella starts from the first-person narration of Buddy Glass. Buddy says that the three characters do not want him to tell the story, but that he wants to tell it anyway. He fears that because this story deals with God, that people will take it as a mystical one. However, Buddy feels that the story is a mixture of the mystical and the romantic.

Zooey Glass sits in the bathtub rereading a four-year-old letter from Buddy. Zooey has seven brothers and sisters, but the oldest brother, Seymour, died by suicide seven years earlier. Another brother, Walt, died in an explosion fighting in WWII. All seven of the siblings appeared as children and adolescents on the quiz radio show “It’s a Wise Child” for 16 years. After the radio show, Zooey became a television actor.

Buddy starts the letter by telling Zooey that he should pursue his PhD before he becomes an actor, because he will have something to fall back on. Buddy writes that he wishes he had his BA but that he dropped out of college because Seymour already had his PhD, and he knew he would never be able to catch up to him.