Updike has been castigated for dismissing Franny as a co-ed with a pregnancy problem. But maybe it's his dismissiveness that irritates people more than his explanation of her anguish. We all *know* it's much more portentous than a missed period. It's all about the Jesus Prayer & Goodness Immanent & Transcendent & how certain frightfully sensitive young people are aware of all this whilst others, the Lane Coutells of this world wrapped in their wool lined Burberrys & their bourgeois concerns, will never recognise it - no, not in a million years. That was certainly how I first read it. It gave such a warm feeling of superiority. I knew how just Franny felt. And I was sure I'd have approached her situation in just the way good old Zooey did. God, there were very few of us left. The salt of the earth. But maybe Franny is no more than an updated version of the Victorian heroine who's *expected* to flop about the place with attacks of the vapours. Adolescent girls have been going in for this sort of thing since time immemorial. Young women of the obsessional persuasion seem to have an especial predilection for starvation linked to the idea of Higher Things. I'm surprised in a way no one has suggested Fran might be an anorexic somewhat before it became the fashion. (Although, of course, I'm not at all suprised.) Scottie B.