Subject: RE: Reference to JDS by Paul Thomas Anderson
From: Micaela (mbombard@middlebury.edu)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 15:17:40 EDT
If Brittney Spears can appeal to a wider audience than say...Bob Dylan, does
that make her qualitatively different/better?
Robbie said: I identify with Franny and Zooey, although I must admit, I
identified with them much more when I was in the middle of high school and
was, by my own admission, rather angsty and self-absorbed.
But isn't Holden, too, "angsty and self-absorbed"?
Just some food for thought.
-Micaela
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org
[mailto:owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org]On Behalf Of L. Manning Vines
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 2:11 PM
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
Subject: RE: Reference to JDS by Paul Thomas Anderson
Micaela said:
<< That said, I must admit that most people I have met who strongly
identify with Catcher, do not identify with F&Z, et al. Furthermore,
those who do identify more with F&Z are often more intelligent
(again, in reference to my own experience only). >>
I identify with Franny and Zooey, although I must admit, I identified with
them much more when I was in the middle of high school and was, by my own
admission, rather angsty and self-absorbed. I still enjoy reading their
stories but in a very different way. I am more interested in reading a book
that can show me things about myself AND those sophomoric minds, as you
called them. I can read and even enjoy a book about a few freaks, but --
even if I'm a freak just like them -- the understanding that they are not at
all like most people, that questions about them are largely irrelvent to
most people and their condition, forces me to see a profoundly different
weight in it.
Franny and Zooey are both beautiful. And, of course, geniuses. Her eyes
are set slightly wider apart than his, as a sister's eyes should be. He has
the uncanny ability to remember, almost verbatim, every thing he has ever
read. I'm paraphrasing the book, but my point is that these people are
preposterous idealizations. They are fantasies. The freakish among us
might see something of ourselves in them, but in some way they do not --
indeed cannot -- exist.
I like the stories. I enjoy reading them. I'll even say that I've learned
things from them. But literature has the capacity to show us things about
our common humanity -- I think that Holden does this, and that Zooey does
not. This is not to say that Zooey is worthless as a character or a story.
But to my estimation, the worth he and his story have is not in the same
ballpark as Holden and his.
-robbie
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