Franny

This has probably been mentioned already as I'm way behind in reading my email, but as far as I remember, Salinger does address the issue of where Franny's book came from in 'Zooey'. Bessie thinks that the book has come from the library; it is clear that she got her information from Lane because she tells Zooey that Lane has alerted her to Franny's obsession with the pilgrim book. Zooey is pretty disgusted that Bessie hasn't realised the books have come from Seymour's room, to which she responds 'You know I don't go in there if I can help it' (or words to that effect - haven't got the book on hand at the moment). This exchange suggests to me that Salinger was concerned to fit the earlier story into the Glass canon and attempted to account for things which were inconsistent with the new context.
Updike says, 'One wonders how a girl raised in a home where Buddhism and crisis theology
were table talk could have postponed her own crisis so long and, when it came, be
so disarmed by it'. Well, he does have a point. On the other hand, Franny is not really very old. I forget if it says exactly how old she is, but she can't be much older than me (22) and I would hardly feel confident in saying that I have had all the spiritual crises (sp?) I might have in the course of a lifetime. Many people I know faced spiritual issues most keenly at university, when they are removed from their home environment for the first time.
Love, Lucy-Ruth
PS Can people try to delete any extraneous matter when they reply to messages. Since I have the digest, I find it hard to wade thriugh the masses of copied messages. Thanks xxx
 bananafish-digest <owner-bananafish-digest@roughdraft.org> wrote:Subject: Re: franny & zooey

This is all REALLY interesting and pretty plausible. See, I think you can
say that Salinger "intended" the Franny character in "Zooey" to be
understood as the same Franny in "Franny" AFTER he wrote "Zooey," but not at
the time he wrote "Franny" -- but, of course, this requires study outside
the texts themselves -- we need to look at the texts closely _within the
context of their publishing history_.

So which authorial intent is correct? What Salinger intended when he wrote
"Franny," or how he intended "Franny" to be understood when he wrote
"Zooey"? You can't have both in this case.

Jim

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Received on Thu Nov 14 10:41:07 2002