the upbraiding of Updike

Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Sun, 15 Feb 1998 18:12:11 +0000

	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.