Re: pregnant
Diego Dell'Era (dellerad@sinectis.com.ar)
Wed, 18 Feb 1998 00:24:29 -0800
In digest 244, Jim wrote:
--
(...) I could much more easily see a deep spiritual crisis causing
physical problems than I could see a physical crisis--pregnancy or
anorexia--
revealing or highlighting a spiritual crisis. If the physical symptom
are the
product of a physical crisis, I don't understand the meaning of the
physical
crisis to the story. It just doesn't make sense.
So it's not that the idea of pregnancy is That hard to swallow given
Franny's
physical symptoms, but that it just doesn't make sense within the
context of
the story, and it certainly means nothing to the end of the story,
unless you
want to go in for some shallow allegorizing that Salinger seems to
avoid...
--
Exactly. As Jim says, being the story what it is, the pregnancy issue is
possible but doesn't add much meaning.
However, that doesn't mean that a crisis provoked by pregnancy should be
of a lesser cathegory. I haven't read the last digest, so this might be
incorrect, but it strikes me as odd that women in this list haven't
noticed the difference it makes to clarify this idea about pregnancy, if
only to narrate their experiences (an exception be made for Chrissy "the
new girl" who wrote Franny's feelings assuming the pregnant hypothesis).
Sorry, I'm not in the dualistic mood today. It seems I'm reluctant to
catalogue pregnancy as a spiritual or physical event, let alone dismiss
anorexia as trivial as I -perhaps wrongly- interpreted Scottie to be
doing with Franny.
I don't think the strong feeling I got out of this story was so much in
the *origin* of the crisis, but in the skilfull means Zooey acts out.
Why, sophisticated girls can't be pregnant? Do we fathom the depth of
our pity according to the particular inconvenience Franny is going
through? If so, F & Z would be just a religious discourse put into short
story form, in which we feel compassion for Franny because we want
ourselves to identify with her high ideals. I don't get it that way.
Salinger *is* able to do great things with mother-son relationships
(take Boo Boo), so it's not a question of biology against more literary
motivations. In fact, I think her son's particularly trivial motive for
a crisis (slight misunderstanding) is trying to express human suffering
for itself rather than something with elaborate causes.
I join those who take F & Z for a love story, starting as unidirectional
love, but ending in... you know what. I mean to state my credo that if
Franny were pregnant or (just for the sake of arguments without textual
justification) there was a deaf-mute-blind Glass child bumping his head
against one of the radios in their appartement, Zooey would manage to
get them on-line with the Fat Lady. And I would be as much delighted as
I am now.
PS: Hey "kkfchoi", thanks for the Holdenish "turn off your computer"
symbols, they are great! You know, my web browser's dialer behaves
pretty much alike. Instead of "Initializing modem / Contacting host" it
broods "I think I'm gonna give old Jane a buzz"...
--
diego dell'era (dellerad@sinectis.com.ar)