PODESTA,Lesley wrote: > Gosh when I joined the list all we were talking about was whether Franny > was pregnant! When Zooey is explaining Way of a Pilgrim to Bessie he says: "Anyway, he starts on his pilgrimage. And he has a problem. He's been reading the Bible all his life, and he wants to know what it means when it says, in Thessalonians, 'Pray without ceasing.' That one line keeps haunting him." Zooey reached for his cigarette again. dragged on it, and then said "There's another similar line in Timothy-- 'I will therefore that men pray everywhere.' And Christ himself, as a matter of fact, says "Men ought always to pray and not to faint.'" So Franny's fainting really doesn't have the slightest thing to do with any physical malady she may have (let alone pregnancy), but is used so the reader will know (when they come across this passage later on, in "Zooey") that even though she is on the right spiritual path, she hasn't exactly got it down just yet. At that point in the story she didn't know how to always pray without fainting yet. Malcolm