WEBVTT 00:02.050 --> 00:05.240 Professor Amy Hungerford: In light of the 00:05.236 --> 00:07.916 fact that I have just sent you paper topics, 00:07.923 --> 00:10.863 my lecture today is going to do two things. 00:10.860 --> 00:14.650 It is going to give you a way into Franny and Zooey, 00:14.649 --> 00:18.319 but it's going to actually give you more than a way into 00:18.315 --> 00:20.795 it. It is really going to give you 00:20.800 --> 00:24.150 a whole packaged reading of Franny and Zooey. 00:24.150 --> 00:29.760 We have just the one day on this novel, and what I'm going 00:29.761 --> 00:35.191 to be doing for you is modeling the way literary critics use 00:35.188 --> 00:38.498 evidence to advance an argument. 00:38.500 --> 00:42.180 It's useful to you when you think about writing a paper to 00:42.179 --> 00:45.859 remember, if it's been a long time since you've written an 00:45.858 --> 00:49.118 English paper, or even if it isn't a long time 00:49.120 --> 00:53.390 since you've written an English paper, that the facts that we, 00:53.390 --> 00:58.080 literary critics, and you, writers on literature, 00:58.083 --> 01:04.443 the facts that we deal with are the details of the text itself. 01:04.439 --> 01:09.199 You may have noticed that I am very fond of reading aloud to 01:09.195 --> 01:11.125 you from these novels. 01:11.129 --> 01:14.569 I'm very fond of reading out passages. 01:14.570 --> 01:17.500 I do it a lot. Why do I do it? 01:17.500 --> 01:22.930 Well, there are two reasons, one because I want you to hear 01:22.926 --> 01:26.596 literary art. Literary art is a verbal art, 01:26.601 --> 01:30.361 and I think too often we only read it silently; 01:30.360 --> 01:34.860 probably not since you were children that people read to you 01:34.857 --> 01:37.477 so much. So, to get a sense of that, 01:37.475 --> 01:41.385 you have to have it in your ear and feel the sound and the 01:41.393 --> 01:45.523 rhythm and the quality, the timbre, the expression of 01:45.520 --> 01:48.830 the voices that we have in these novels. 01:48.830 --> 01:52.990 Our writer for today thinks so highly of that capacity of 01:52.986 --> 01:57.436 literature to embody the human voice that he imagines a whole 01:57.439 --> 01:59.739 religious world around him. 01:59.739 --> 02:03.489 That's going to be the gist of my argument today. 02:03.489 --> 02:08.319 But then, there is a second, sort of, less mystical reason, 02:08.315 --> 02:13.385 and that's that these are the facts of a literary argument, 02:13.390 --> 02:17.060 these words that I give to you. 02:17.060 --> 02:19.450 It's like, if you're in an astronomy lecture, 02:19.446 --> 02:22.806 they're going to give you some facts about the composition of a 02:22.808 --> 02:25.138 planet, or its atmosphere, or whatever. 02:25.139 --> 02:26.909 Those are the facts for that field. 02:26.909 --> 02:31.069 For this field, these are the facts. 02:31.069 --> 02:35.149 So, in your papers, if you find yourself writing 02:35.150 --> 02:39.390 and you get to the end of a page and you look back, 02:39.389 --> 02:43.319 you scan back over your page, and you see that there are no 02:43.320 --> 02:46.910 quotation marks, you are not using any of the 02:46.909 --> 02:50.549 facts of the novel to produce your argument, 02:50.549 --> 02:52.749 to support your claims. 02:52.750 --> 02:57.860 So, that's like the eye test, the glance test. 02:57.860 --> 02:59.790 Are you supporting your claims? 02:59.789 --> 03:03.979 If you have very few quotations, chances are you are 03:03.977 --> 03:06.357 not. So, think of this lecture, 03:06.360 --> 03:09.270 as I go through it, as a kind of model. 03:09.270 --> 03:13.380 Pay attention to what I'm doing in using these textual bits and 03:13.379 --> 03:17.489 pieces and putting them together and making claims for them. 03:17.490 --> 03:19.070 I do it every week. 03:19.069 --> 03:23.579 It just so happens that this argument is more closed, 03:23.580 --> 03:26.270 more settled, in my own mind. 03:26.270 --> 03:30.100 It's less of an opening argument than it is something 03:30.099 --> 03:32.529 that I want to convince you of. 03:32.530 --> 03:37.650 So, there's a reason for that and that is that I'm writing 03:37.645 --> 03:39.345 about this novel. 03:39.349 --> 03:42.449 It's in the introduction to a book that I'm writing about the 03:42.445 --> 03:45.555 literature of this period, and so it's very present to my 03:45.557 --> 03:48.777 mind as a sort of piece of a larger argument about religion 03:48.781 --> 03:51.061 and the American novel in this period, 03:51.060 --> 03:53.790 so that's what I'm giving you. 03:53.789 --> 03:57.669 When you approach any novel to make an argument about it, 03:57.669 --> 04:02.019 if you want to be ambitious, the first thing to think about 04:02.018 --> 04:05.308 is well, what's obvious about the novel? 04:05.310 --> 04:09.290 What can you observe at first glance about its style, 04:09.294 --> 04:11.824 about its form, about its setting, 04:11.822 --> 04:15.732 about its character, about its presuppositions? 04:15.729 --> 04:18.909 In Franny and Zooey, what did you notice? 04:18.910 --> 04:24.280 Tell me what you noticed, at first bat, 04:24.281 --> 04:28.381 if any of you have read it. 04:28.379 --> 04:31.089 What did you notice about the novel? 04:31.089 --> 04:33.209 Uh huh.Student: It doesn't move around very 04:33.209 --> 04:34.149 much. It just stays in a limited 04:34.148 --> 04:35.538 space.Professor Amy Hungerford: Absolutely. 04:35.540 --> 04:37.250 Confined settings, very confined settings, 04:37.248 --> 04:39.198 absolutely. Yes. 04:39.200 --> 04:41.810 What else? Yes.Student: 04:41.810 --> 04:43.350 A lot of dialog?Professor Amy 04:43.350 --> 04:44.890 Hungerford: Lots of dialog, yes. 04:44.890 --> 04:47.510 What else? Uh huh.Student: 04:47.509 --> 04:50.249 [inaudible]Professor Amy Hungerford: 04:50.248 --> 04:52.078 Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. 04:52.080 --> 04:53.340 Yeah. There's a back story. 04:53.339 --> 04:55.579 You can feel that back story to the novel. 04:55.580 --> 04:56.940 Yeah. What else? 04:56.940 --> 04:58.420 What else did you notice? 04:58.420 --> 05:01.400 Yes.Student: There's a lot of focus on 05:01.396 --> 05:03.686 like little motions that people do, 05:03.689 --> 05:06.209 like picking up cigarettes and dropping things.Professor 05:06.211 --> 05:07.311 Amy Hungerford: Yeah. 05:07.310 --> 05:11.120 A lot of attention to physical detail and physical movement, 05:11.115 --> 05:14.915 and that's connected to this point about confined spaces. 05:14.920 --> 05:17.640 It's the movement of bodies within confined spaces that 05:17.638 --> 05:19.248 really preoccupies this novel. 05:19.250 --> 05:21.320 What about the style of the novel? 05:21.320 --> 05:22.540 You talked about dialog. 05:22.540 --> 05:26.730 Is there anything else about the style that you noticed? 05:26.730 --> 05:27.980 Yes.Student: There's a lot of 05:27.983 --> 05:29.653 italics.Professor Amy Hungerford: A lot of 05:29.654 --> 05:31.654 italics. What does that connote to 05:31.648 --> 05:34.158 you?Student: Trying to convey 05:34.158 --> 05:37.568 feeling.Professor Amy Hungerford: Yeah. 05:37.569 --> 05:39.109 Absolutely. A lot of emphasis, 05:39.109 --> 05:42.189 a lot of variation in tone, and the italics are part of the 05:42.187 --> 05:43.617 representation of that. 05:43.620 --> 05:47.900 Yeah. What else? Yes.Student: 05:47.896 --> 05:50.556 A lot of the dialog seems to be combative. 05:50.560 --> 05:53.110 There's arguing between two people. 05:53.110 --> 05:53.740 Professor Amy Hungerford: Yes. 05:53.740 --> 05:56.340 This is a book about arguments, absolutely. 05:56.339 --> 06:00.519 What are they arguing about most of the time? 06:00.520 --> 06:05.210 06:05.210 --> 06:06.780 All right. Well, that's where I will pick 06:06.778 --> 06:07.818 up. Oh, Sarah. 06:07.820 --> 06:08.770 Do you want to say? 06:08.769 --> 06:10.499 Student: There are a lot of abstract 06:10.499 --> 06:12.379 ideas.Professor Amy Hungerford: Yeah. 06:12.380 --> 06:13.400 Yeah. Absolutely. 06:13.399 --> 06:16.329 They are talking about abstract intellectual ideas, 06:16.333 --> 06:18.683 often religious or philosophical ones, 06:18.680 --> 06:23.500 and that, plus its setting: I hope you noticed the sort of 06:23.502 --> 06:27.312 New Havenish setting of Franny's breakdown. 06:27.310 --> 06:31.180 We're told that Lane isn't exactly a Yale man, 06:31.179 --> 06:35.649 but he sure looks a lot like a Yale English major, 06:35.649 --> 06:43.339 dare I say, such an unpleasant character, and so, 06:43.337 --> 06:46.777 so pompous. What you do, 06:46.779 --> 06:51.199 when you write a paper or try to advance an argument, 06:51.195 --> 06:55.945 is try to write an argument that will attend to all those 06:55.952 --> 07:01.012 things that you guys just said, that you take the obvious 07:01.013 --> 07:05.503 things, and when you craft an argument, the best thing, 07:05.500 --> 07:08.720 the most ambitious thing, to do is to come up with 07:08.719 --> 07:10.689 something where, in the end, 07:10.689 --> 07:14.789 you can say something about those major aspects. 07:14.790 --> 07:18.440 You don't have to do it in the paper, but it should be an 07:18.439 --> 07:22.019 argument that has something to say back to those obvious 07:22.023 --> 07:24.423 things. Why is the style this way? 07:24.420 --> 07:26.780 Why is the plot working this way? 07:26.779 --> 07:30.929 Why are these particular characters behaving in this way? 07:30.930 --> 07:34.880 Why use those confined spaces? 07:34.879 --> 07:40.369 So, my argument today is going to try to have something 07:40.374 --> 07:46.344 to say back to all those obvious aspects that you pointed out so 07:46.343 --> 07:49.703 rightly. But I'm going to start from a 07:49.696 --> 07:52.596 much more pointed and local question. 07:52.600 --> 07:56.410 And this is the other thing that a good short paper 07:56.412 --> 07:59.772 especially does, is that you don't get at all 07:59.767 --> 08:03.577 that big stuff by, kind of, taking it head on. 08:03.579 --> 08:08.099 You have to come down to the facts that I was talking about, 08:08.104 --> 08:10.644 the bits of text, the text itself, 08:10.635 --> 08:15.185 the words that author chose; that's where you begin. 08:15.189 --> 08:21.099 And part of the genius of a strong paper is choosing the 08:21.099 --> 08:26.579 place in the text to begin that pointed analysis. 08:26.579 --> 08:34.199 So, my choice for this is that odd introduction in-between the 08:34.201 --> 08:39.201 two stories, and this is on 48 and 49. 08:39.200 --> 08:45.190 This is, we come to find out, Buddy, Zooey's older brother, 08:45.188 --> 08:49.788 narrating the story, and Buddy gives us a little 08:49.794 --> 08:54.814 preamble telling us how the real characters in the story, 08:54.809 --> 08:59.389 the real people who are then characters in his story, 08:59.394 --> 09:04.684 how they felt about the story and what their objections to it 09:04.683 --> 09:07.243 were (and this is on 48). 09:07.240 --> 09:10.870 09:10.870 --> 09:15.460 We find out that Franny objects to the story's distribution in 09:15.459 --> 09:19.869 the world or the movie, the prose home movie as Buddy 09:19.870 --> 09:24.670 calls it, because it shows her blowing her nose a lot. 09:24.669 --> 09:29.549 His mother, Bessie, objects because it shows her in 09:29.548 --> 09:33.538 her housecoat. But Zooey has a more 09:33.537 --> 09:36.327 substantive objection. 09:36.330 --> 09:39.090 It's the leading man, however, who has made the most 09:39.090 --> 09:41.560 eloquent appeal to me to call off the production. 09:41.559 --> 09:43.939 [This is in the middle of page 48.] 09:43.936 --> 09:47.706 He feels that the plot hinges on mysticism or religious 09:47.711 --> 09:49.841 mystification. In any case, 09:49.836 --> 09:53.086 he makes it very clear, a too vividly apparent 09:53.086 --> 09:57.746 transcendent element of sorts, which he says he's worried can 09:57.754 --> 10:01.184 only expedite, move up, the day and hour of my 10:01.182 --> 10:03.012 professional undoing. 10:03.009 --> 10:06.269 People are already shaking their heads over me and any 10:06.273 --> 10:10.093 immediate further professional use on my part of the word "God" 10:10.090 --> 10:13.910 except as a familiar, healthy American expletive will 10:13.907 --> 10:18.167 be taken or rather confirmed as the very worst kind of name 10:18.167 --> 10:22.127 dropping and a sure sign that I'm going straight to the 10:22.134 --> 10:24.994 dogs. And then, he speaks back to 10:24.985 --> 10:26.435 Zooey. He says, "Well, 10:26.440 --> 10:29.160 I'm going to still distribute my story. 10:29.159 --> 10:33.009 I still want to tell this story," and he does it in a kind 10:33.009 --> 10:34.359 of roundabout way. 10:34.360 --> 10:38.050 And this is on page 49. 10:38.049 --> 10:41.159 Somewhere in The Great Gatsby, which was my Tom 10:41.163 --> 10:44.433 Sawyer when I was twelve, the youthful narrator remarks 10:44.434 --> 10:47.984 that everybody suspects himself of having at least one of the 10:47.982 --> 10:51.592 cardinal virtues and he goes on to say that he thinks his, 10:51.590 --> 10:54.490 bless his heart, is honesty. 10:54.490 --> 10:58.030 Mine, I think, is that I know the difference 10:58.033 --> 11:01.663 between a mystical story and a love story. 11:01.659 --> 11:06.499 I say that my current offering isn't a mystical story or a 11:06.495 --> 11:09.715 religiously mystifying story at all. 11:09.720 --> 11:15.160 I say it's a compound or multiple love story, 11:15.162 --> 11:20.182 pure and complicated. What Buddy does, 11:20.181 --> 11:23.851 in this passage, is set up this opposition 11:23.848 --> 11:28.498 between his own reading of his story and Zooey's. 11:28.500 --> 11:31.330 Now, why are we given these objections? 11:31.330 --> 11:35.230 I think it's to give us a dynamic sense of the family 11:35.226 --> 11:39.716 conversation going on between them, but it also addresses one 11:39.721 --> 11:41.821 of those obvious things. 11:41.820 --> 11:44.040 They talk a lot, as Sarah said, 11:44.043 --> 11:48.343 they talk a lot about abstract questions, and this puts the 11:48.340 --> 11:52.120 meaning of the story in that abstract register. 11:52.120 --> 11:56.880 Is it a love story, or is it a religious story, 11:56.877 --> 11:59.047 a mystifying story? 11:59.050 --> 12:03.260 Which is it? I am going to argue that it's 12:03.256 --> 12:06.466 both. And I'm going to advance that 12:06.473 --> 12:11.803 argument by going straight to the theological question that 12:11.799 --> 12:16.759 Zooey is so intent on solving when Franny is having her 12:16.757 --> 12:19.877 breakdown in the living room. 12:19.879 --> 12:24.659 So, just to review: Franny has her breakdown when 12:24.661 --> 12:30.141 she comes into what I suspect is New Haven to attend the 12:30.141 --> 12:34.621 Yale-Harvard football game with her boyfriend, 12:34.624 --> 12:38.904 Lane. So, Franny when she sees Lane, 12:38.901 --> 12:44.741 affects great enthusiasm, and so on, but this is what we 12:44.735 --> 12:48.655 hear about Lane from the narrator. 12:48.660 --> 12:52.300 This is on page 11. 12:52.299 --> 12:55.859 Lane was speaking now as someone does who has been 12:55.858 --> 12:59.738 monopolizing conversation for a good quarter of an hour or so 12:59.741 --> 13:03.821 and who believes he has just hit a stride where his voice can do 13:03.817 --> 13:05.497 absolutely no wrong. 13:05.500 --> 13:09.210 [I always read this and I think, "I'm lecturing."] 13:09.210 --> 13:12.470 "I mean, to put it crudely,'" he was saying, 13:12.465 --> 13:16.625 "the thing you could say he lacks is testicularity. 13:16.630 --> 13:17.810 You know what I mean?" 13:17.809 --> 13:21.029 He was slouched rhetorically forward toward Franny, 13:21.034 --> 13:24.454 his receptive audience, a supporting forearm on either 13:24.452 --> 13:26.002 side of his martini. 13:26.000 --> 13:27.360 "Lacks what?" Franny said. 13:27.360 --> 13:29.980 She had had to clear her throat before speaking. 13:29.980 --> 13:33.570 It had been so long since she had said anything at all. 13:33.570 --> 13:36.600 Lane hesitated. "Masculinity," he said. 13:36.600 --> 13:37.720 "I heard you the first time." 13:37.720 --> 13:41.370 "Anyway, it was the motif of the thing, so to speak, 13:41.365 --> 13:45.435 what I was trying to bring out in a fairly subtle way," 13:45.440 --> 13:48.350 Lane said, very closely following the trend of his own 13:48.347 --> 13:50.427 conversation. "I mean God. 13:50.429 --> 13:54.249 I honestly thought it was going to go over like a goddamn lead 13:54.248 --> 13:57.878 balloon and when I got it back with this goddamn A on it in 13:57.879 --> 14:01.759 letters about six feet high I swear I nearly keeled over." 14:01.760 --> 14:03.670 Franny again cleared her throat. 14:03.669 --> 14:07.129 Apparently, her self-imposed sentence of unadulterated good 14:07.131 --> 14:09.341 listenership had been fully served. 14:09.340 --> 14:11.060 "Why?" she asked. 14:11.060 --> 14:12.910 Lane looked faintly interrupted. 14:12.910 --> 14:15.050 "Why what?" "Why did you think it was going 14:15.050 --> 14:16.510 to go over like a lead balloon?" 14:16.510 --> 14:18.020 "I just told you. 14:18.019 --> 14:21.839 I just got through saying this guy, Brughman is a big Flaubert 14:21.843 --> 14:24.103 man or at least I thought he was." 14:24.100 --> 14:24.940 "Oh," Franny said. 14:24.940 --> 14:30.820 She smiled. Franny is disgusted by his 14:30.817 --> 14:34.187 pomposity. This experience, 14:34.188 --> 14:38.898 combined with her experience in a religion seminar with this 14:38.900 --> 14:41.140 man, Professor Tupper, 14:41.143 --> 14:45.993 at school, has convinced herself that the world is 14:45.994 --> 14:50.544 superficial, that it's impossible to find 14:50.540 --> 14:56.440 anything meaningful in the academic discussion of these 14:56.442 --> 15:02.712 pseudo-intellectual problems, the "testicularity" of one 15:02.713 --> 15:04.743 writer or another. 15:04.740 --> 15:10.840 And Lane's engagement with literature, specifically, 15:10.835 --> 15:14.775 is all about his ego inflation. 15:14.779 --> 15:18.909 So, he can't wait to tell Franny that the professor said 15:18.914 --> 15:22.904 he should try to publish it, and then my favorite thing: 15:22.896 --> 15:26.346 he wants to read it to her over the football weekend. 15:26.350 --> 15:30.700 "Hey, come, let's read my English essay." 15:30.700 --> 15:31.890 Hello. Student: Hi. 15:31.890 --> 15:33.820 Can I interrupt? We have a couple of singing 15:33.820 --> 15:34.940 valentines. Can we deliver them 15:34.939 --> 15:36.539 now?Professor Amy Hungerford: No, 15:36.544 --> 15:39.084 you can't. Sorry. 15:39.080 --> 15:44.070 15:44.070 --> 15:44.820 Student: Thank you.Professor 15:44.815 --> 15:45.475 Amy Hungerford: And I'm worried about 15:45.477 --> 15:45.657 e-mail! 15:45.660 --> 15:51.380 15:51.379 --> 15:54.529 Talk about pricking my pomposity. 15:54.530 --> 15:58.730 All right. So, she starts saying the Jesus 15:58.734 --> 16:03.034 prayer, which is, "Lord Jesus Christ, 16:03.025 --> 16:08.145 Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." 16:08.149 --> 16:11.489 Now, she has taken this prayer from a book called The Way of 16:11.486 --> 16:14.336 the Pilgrim. It's a Russian Orthodox 16:14.341 --> 16:16.991 religious classic, a very old text, 16:16.987 --> 16:20.097 and it depicts the life of a pilgrim. 16:20.100 --> 16:23.640 And we get the summary of this a little bit in the novel, 16:23.640 --> 16:26.480 as Franny explains it, or tries to explain it, 16:26.484 --> 16:29.144 to Lane, who is entirely uninterested. 16:29.139 --> 16:33.979 It is about a man who tries to take seriously the Bible's 16:33.975 --> 16:38.545 injunction to pray without ceasing, and the prayer for 16:38.551 --> 16:41.661 Franny becomes a kind of mantra. 16:41.659 --> 16:46.479 She is trying to say it over and over again as she goes about 16:46.482 --> 16:50.102 in this world that is so disappointing to her, 16:50.100 --> 16:52.190 feels so false to her. 16:52.190 --> 16:56.510 And so, finally, the strain of trying to hold 16:56.509 --> 17:01.909 out this kind of religious awareness in the face of Lane 17:01.908 --> 17:06.128 and his English paper is just too much, 17:06.130 --> 17:10.260 and she faints. Now, Zooey has a big 17:10.255 --> 17:14.615 problem with her use of this prayer, and this is what gives 17:14.617 --> 17:19.277 the book that sort of combative tone that we were talking about 17:19.280 --> 17:22.740 a little earlier that somebody mentioned. 17:22.740 --> 17:27.740 So, if you look on page 169, my question now is, 17:27.737 --> 17:32.197 in my argument: What is Zooey's critique of 17:32.203 --> 17:35.503 Franny's use of the prayer? 17:35.500 --> 17:38.820 What constitutes that critique? 17:38.820 --> 17:39.520 What's wrong with it? 17:39.520 --> 17:43.180 17:43.180 --> 17:48.810 So, on 169, he says to Franny as she's sniveling on the couch: 17:48.809 --> 17:50.599 "God almighty, Franny," he said. 17:50.599 --> 17:53.129 "If you're going to say the Jesus prayer, 17:53.133 --> 17:56.933 at least say it to Jesus and not to Saint Francis and Seymour 17:56.933 --> 18:00.103 and Heidi's grandfather all wrapped up in one. 18:00.099 --> 18:03.269 Keep Him in mind if you say it, and Him only, 18:03.269 --> 18:07.519 and Him as He was and not as you'd like Him to have been. 18:07.520 --> 18:09.870 You don't face any facts. 18:09.869 --> 18:13.259 This same damned attitude of not facing facts is what got you 18:13.264 --> 18:16.154 into this messy state of mind in the first place, 18:16.150 --> 18:17.940 and it can't possibly get you out of it." 18:17.940 --> 18:22.420 And then, this argument goes on for a couple of pages, 18:22.423 --> 18:26.483 and I'm just going to pick up the end of it here, 18:26.484 --> 18:28.604 on the bottom of 171. 18:28.600 --> 18:31.360 He is explaining who Jesus was. 18:31.359 --> 18:35.069 "If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand His 18:35.072 --> 18:37.352 prayer. You don't get the prayer at all. 18:37.349 --> 18:40.179 You just get some kind of organized cant. 18:40.180 --> 18:44.210 Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important 18:44.212 --> 18:46.712 mission. This was no Saint Francis with 18:46.714 --> 18:50.244 enough time to knock out a few canticles or to preach to the 18:50.244 --> 18:53.594 birds or do any of the other endearing things so close to 18:53.594 --> 18:55.154 Franny Glass's heart. 18:55.150 --> 18:56.650 I'm being serious now, goddamit. 18:56.650 --> 18:58.740 How can you miss seeing that? 18:58.740 --> 19:01.760 If God had wanted somebody with Saint Francis's consistently 19:01.762 --> 19:04.582 winning personality for the job in the New Testament, 19:04.579 --> 19:06.299 He'd have picked him, you can be sure. 19:06.299 --> 19:09.389 As it was, He picked the best, the smartest, 19:09.391 --> 19:12.121 the most loving, the least sentimental, 19:12.122 --> 19:16.582 the most unimitative master He could have possibly picked. 19:16.579 --> 19:19.509 And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, 19:19.507 --> 19:23.407 you're missing the whole point of the Jesus prayer." 19:23.410 --> 19:28.940 So, Zooey's critique is that Franny is not being specific in 19:28.940 --> 19:31.190 her use of the prayer. 19:31.190 --> 19:37.390 She's paying no attention to who Jesus was and what it means 19:37.388 --> 19:40.958 to actually pray to that figure. 19:40.960 --> 19:46.250 But, to anyone paying attention to the other things that Zooey 19:46.250 --> 19:51.020 says and the other things that he does in this novel, 19:51.019 --> 19:55.709 this is kind of odd, and it's hard to square. 19:55.710 --> 20:00.060 So, my next kind of question is: How does that very 20:00.061 --> 20:04.071 doctrinally specific understanding of the Jesus 20:04.065 --> 20:08.935 prayer relate to the whole religious education that Buddy 20:08.939 --> 20:13.079 and Seymour gave him, and that he seems to be 20:13.079 --> 20:17.119 thinking so hard about as he reads that letter in the 20:17.124 --> 20:20.704 bathtub? The letter in the bathtub tells 20:20.702 --> 20:24.832 us about that education, and let's look on 61. 20:24.830 --> 20:38.060 20:38.060 --> 20:41.170 Sorry. That's not exactly the right 20:41.171 --> 20:42.191 page. This is 65. 20:42.190 --> 20:43.310 I'm sorry. 20:43.310 --> 20:47.230 20:47.230 --> 20:52.440 In this letter Buddy explains to Zooey what he and Seymour 20:52.443 --> 20:54.733 have been trying to do. 20:54.730 --> 20:57.590 "Much, much more important though," 20:57.586 --> 21:01.936 [Buddy says in the middle of 65] "Seymour had already begun to 21:01.943 --> 21:05.263 believe, and I agreed with him as far as 21:05.262 --> 21:09.552 I was able to see the point, that education by any name 21:09.553 --> 21:12.763 would smell as sweet, and maybe much sweeter, 21:12.762 --> 21:15.822 if it didn't begin with a quest for knowledge at all, 21:15.819 --> 21:18.849 but with a quest, as Zen would put it, 21:18.852 --> 21:20.412 for no-knowledge. 21:20.410 --> 21:22.420 Dr. Suzuki says somewhere, 21:22.422 --> 21:25.892 that to be in a state of pure consciousness, 21:25.885 --> 21:29.105 satori, is to be with God before He said, 21:29.105 --> 21:31.275 'Let there be light.' 21:31.279 --> 21:34.999 Seymour and I thought it might be a good thing to hold back 21:35.002 --> 21:38.452 this light from you and Franny, at least as far as we were 21:38.445 --> 21:41.195 able, and all the many lower, more fashionable lighting 21:41.199 --> 21:43.749 effects--the arts, sciences, classics, 21:43.746 --> 21:48.326 languages--'til you were both able at least to conceive of a 21:48.332 --> 21:53.002 state of being where the mind knows the source of all light." 21:56.924 --> 22:01.944 that Zooey's response to Franny comes out of, 22:01.935 --> 22:09.105 is precisely not a doctrinally specific Christian education. 22:09.109 --> 22:13.279 Rather, it's something more like a Buddhist tradition, 22:13.276 --> 22:15.946 a syncretic, mystical tradition. 22:15.950 --> 22:21.680 The idea is that there is some state of being with God. 22:21.680 --> 22:25.720 Knowledge, all the arts and sciences, literature, 22:25.719 --> 22:30.769 all of the religious writings of the world are manifestations 22:30.768 --> 22:35.058 of that voice that at its origin is God saying, 22:35.060 --> 22:36.310 "Let there be light." 22:36.310 --> 22:40.550 It's the voice of creation. 22:40.549 --> 22:46.349 Seymour and Buddy want Franny and Zooey to rest at that 22:46.353 --> 22:52.913 origin, undistracted by the manifestations of the creation, 22:52.910 --> 22:57.090 and know some kind of consciousness of God in that 22:57.087 --> 23:01.237 place. So, Zooey, pretty much, 23:01.241 --> 23:09.701 subscribes to these tenets, and you can see it especially 23:09.695 --> 23:18.295 on page 175, when he goes into his brother's old room. 23:18.299 --> 23:21.519 Now, let me explain a detail that I think is 23:21.521 --> 23:25.701 important, but I think a little lost to us in today's world of 23:25.701 --> 23:29.381 technology. There's a phone in Buddy and 23:29.380 --> 23:34.110 Seymour's old room that is a private internal line, 23:34.112 --> 23:39.982 and it just goes from one room to another in the apartment; 23:39.980 --> 23:41.940 it's not an outside phone line. 23:41.940 --> 23:45.870 And what's interesting about it, and what indicates its 23:45.869 --> 23:49.319 importance to Buddy, is that Bessie gets on about 23:49.316 --> 23:53.336 him getting a phone where he's teaching in upstate New York; 23:53.339 --> 23:56.649 he's teaching writing as a visiting writer at a college in 23:56.654 --> 23:57.764 upstate New York. 23:57.759 --> 23:59.919 And Bessie, his mother, keeps saying, 23:59.924 --> 24:02.454 "Well, why won't you get a phone, Buddy? 24:02.450 --> 24:07.060 You're paying to maintain this interior line in our apartment, 24:07.063 --> 24:09.563 and yet you won't get a phone." 24:09.559 --> 24:14.989 For Buddy, the phone that's within the family compound, 24:14.988 --> 24:17.898 so to speak, family apartment, 24:17.904 --> 24:22.734 is the more important line of communication. 24:22.730 --> 24:26.150 So, when Zooey goes upstairs to use that phone, 24:26.152 --> 24:30.472 it's freighted with all the significance that Buddy has put 24:30.467 --> 24:35.737 upon it. But there's a whole ritual 24:35.743 --> 24:43.503 involved in Zooey's entrance into this place. 24:43.500 --> 24:44.410 This is on 175. 24:44.410 --> 24:49.130 24:49.130 --> 24:51.890 At the far end of the hall he went into the bedroom he 24:51.891 --> 24:53.811 had once shared with his twin brothers, 24:53.809 --> 24:56.469 which now, in 1955, was his alone, 24:56.471 --> 25:01.151 but he stayed in his room for not more than two minutes. 25:01.150 --> 25:04.040 When he came out, he had on the same sweaty 25:04.039 --> 25:06.049 shirt. There was, however, 25:06.050 --> 25:10.280 a slight but fairly distinct change in his appearance. 25:10.279 --> 25:15.109 He had acquired a cigar and lighted it, and for some reason 25:15.109 --> 25:18.439 he had an unfolded white handkerchief, 25:18.440 --> 25:23.370 draped over his head, possibly to ward off rain, 25:23.365 --> 25:27.645 or hail, or brimstone. So, why does he do this? 25:27.650 --> 25:32.420 What's the meaning of this little detail of Zooey's 25:32.419 --> 25:35.319 appearance? Well, one thing that a literary 25:35.316 --> 25:38.096 argument can do is take something small like this and 25:38.096 --> 25:41.566 try to give an account for it, so that's what I'm going to do. 25:41.569 --> 25:47.919 He's venerating the room that Seymour and Buddy occupied. 25:47.920 --> 25:53.050 He's covering his head in a traditional religious fashion, 25:53.054 --> 25:58.284 so in order to enter this holy place he covers his head. 25:58.280 --> 26:00.400 (The cigar? I don't have an account of that. 26:00.400 --> 26:03.890 You guys figure that out. 26:03.890 --> 26:05.700 That's the other nice thing about literary arguments. 26:05.700 --> 26:09.840 There are always little details that they don't account for, 26:09.838 --> 26:13.838 and that's the loose thread that you can pull to make your 26:13.837 --> 26:17.997 own.) And so, what does he find when he goes 26:17.996 --> 26:20.266 in to this holy space? 26:20.269 --> 26:25.089 Well, he finds two panels of beaver board, 26:25.087 --> 26:31.667 on 178,179, and they have the quotations that Seymour and 26:31.667 --> 26:38.597 Buddy have collected from all their favorite religious, 26:38.599 --> 26:42.719 philosophical, mystical, literary reading, 26:42.717 --> 26:47.837 and I'd like you just to think about one of them. 26:47.840 --> 26:49.850 So this is the bottom of 178. 26:49.850 --> 26:53.880 This is from Sri Rama Krishna. 26:53.880 --> 26:58.180 "Sir, we ought to teach the people that they are doing 26:58.175 --> 27:02.685 wrong in worshipping the images and pictures in the temple." 27:02.690 --> 27:05.370 Rama Krishna: "That's the way with you 27:05.367 --> 27:08.567 Calcutta people. You want to teach and preach. 27:08.569 --> 27:12.399 You want to give millions when you are beggars yourselves. 27:12.400 --> 27:16.340 Do you think God does not know that He is being worshipped in 27:16.341 --> 27:18.051 the images and pictures? 27:18.049 --> 27:22.489 If a worshipper should make a mistake, do you not think God 27:22.492 --> 27:26.782 will know his intent?" This is, I think one, 27:26.782 --> 27:32.002 of the best examples of that syncretic view of religion, 27:32.001 --> 27:37.981 that basically all worshippers are worshipping the same god. 27:37.980 --> 27:40.790 They may do it in different forms; 27:40.790 --> 27:45.330 they may make mistakes; they may be mistaken about 27:45.330 --> 27:46.800 where God resides. 27:46.799 --> 27:50.219 But, in this view, God is so powerful and so 27:50.219 --> 27:55.149 transcendent that God will know the heart of the worshipper. 27:55.150 --> 28:03.020 So, if you apply that back to Franny, why does Zooey have this 28:03.022 --> 28:06.122 difficulty? Why does he have this 28:06.115 --> 28:09.145 difficulty in the specificity of her prayer? 28:09.150 --> 28:13.360 What is it that is bothering him? 28:13.359 --> 28:19.369 Well, I think you begin to get an answer to this tension 28:19.368 --> 28:25.708 between specific doctrine and syncretic religion when Zooey 28:25.705 --> 28:31.375 gets to the subject of acting, which is what this second 28:31.383 --> 28:35.863 attempt at speaking to Franny, this time over the phone, 28:35.860 --> 28:39.150 is concerned with. 28:39.150 --> 28:42.450 There is a detail here of course that Zooey, 28:42.449 --> 28:47.359 in making a second attempt to converse with Franny about this, 28:47.359 --> 28:51.929 impersonates his brother, Buddy, on the phone. 28:51.930 --> 28:55.160 Now I'm just going to leave that observation, 28:55.158 --> 28:56.698 remind you of that. 28:56.700 --> 28:59.680 I have a way to account for that, but it's going to take to 28:59.680 --> 29:01.530 the end of my argument to do that, 29:01.529 --> 29:04.159 so I'm going to argue that that's significant, 29:04.160 --> 29:07.610 but I'm not going to talk about why it's significant yet. 29:07.609 --> 29:11.049 But let's look at that theology of acting. 29:11.050 --> 29:12.590 This is on page 198. 29:12.590 --> 29:15.810 29:15.809 --> 29:19.819 This is coming towards the climax of their conversation. 29:19.820 --> 29:22.840 29:22.839 --> 29:26.479 Part of what's been bothering Franny is her frustration with 29:26.480 --> 29:30.240 acting, and that's one of the things that Lane is so surprised 29:30.244 --> 29:32.614 she has given up; it was the only thing she was 29:32.613 --> 29:33.283 passionate about. 29:33.279 --> 29:37.159 And we know--from reading Buddy's letter over Zooey's 29:37.157 --> 29:41.847 shoulder in the bathtub--we know that Zooey had similar concerns 29:41.854 --> 29:47.624 about his own acting career, his own commitment to acting 29:47.620 --> 29:52.570 that Buddy tried to persuade him out of. 29:52.569 --> 29:56.039 "You can say the Jesus prayer" [Zooey says to Franny], 29:56.040 --> 29:59.060 "from now 'til doomsday, but if you don't realize that 29:59.063 --> 30:01.643 the only thing that counts in the religious life is 30:01.638 --> 30:04.158 detachment, I don't see how you'll ever 30:04.161 --> 30:05.431 even move an inch. 30:05.430 --> 30:08.180 Detachment, buddy, and only detachment, 30:08.179 --> 30:11.579 desirelessness, cessation from all hankering. 30:11.580 --> 30:13.610 It's this business of desiring. 30:13.609 --> 30:16.769 If you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in 30:16.766 --> 30:19.196 the first place. Why are you making me tell you 30:19.197 --> 30:20.417 things you already know? 30:20.420 --> 30:24.110 Somewhere along the line in one damn incarnation or another, 30:24.111 --> 30:26.801 if you like, you not only had a hankering to 30:26.802 --> 30:30.922 be an actor or an actress, but to be a good one. 30:30.920 --> 30:32.180 You're stuck with it now. 30:32.180 --> 30:35.920 You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. 30:35.920 --> 30:38.320 Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. 30:38.319 --> 30:42.289 The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you 30:42.294 --> 30:45.374 can do, is act. Act for God if you want to, 30:45.367 --> 30:47.697 be God's actress if you want to. 30:47.700 --> 30:54.460 What could be prettier?" Zooey has this understanding of 30:54.459 --> 31:00.449 the cosmos that suggests that strong, specific human desires 31:00.453 --> 31:05.333 actually change the course of cosmic futures. 31:05.329 --> 31:09.399 So somewhere, maybe in pre-incarnational time 31:09.396 --> 31:14.846 before Franny became Franny, she wanted to be an actress. 31:14.849 --> 31:19.299 The religious thing Zooey says is to inhabit that, 31:19.301 --> 31:23.301 to honor that, to follow up on the results of 31:23.299 --> 31:25.479 that prior desiring. 31:25.480 --> 31:27.280 But why is it acting? 31:27.279 --> 31:32.189 Why specifically acting and why this weird comment at the end, 31:32.187 --> 31:34.357 "What could be prettier?" 31:34.359 --> 31:38.239 What does prettiness have to do with this? 31:38.240 --> 31:41.410 Well, if you look at the description, for instance, 31:41.409 --> 31:44.389 of Zooey's face, there's a beautiful description 31:44.388 --> 31:47.948 of how his face is beautiful, in what way his face is 31:47.954 --> 31:51.324 beautiful. We know that Franny is an 31:51.318 --> 31:53.868 attractive young woman. 31:53.869 --> 31:57.889 We know that she worries about beauty, and especially in 31:57.891 --> 32:00.491 poetry. When she's trying to explain 32:00.492 --> 32:03.342 what's wrong, part of what's wrong is that 32:03.337 --> 32:07.147 when she learns poetry in the classroom none of it seems 32:07.153 --> 32:10.833 beautiful to her; it all seems like some other 32:10.826 --> 32:14.656 kind of production, not the production of beauty. 32:14.660 --> 32:18.750 So prettiness, beauty, the aesthetic is at the 32:18.746 --> 32:23.826 heart of the spiritual practice that Zooey is urging upon 32:23.833 --> 32:27.923 Franny, the spiritual practice of acting. 32:27.920 --> 32:32.960 And I would remind you, looking back to that passage on 32:32.960 --> 32:37.910 page 65 and into the 66, that specifically among the 32:37.905 --> 32:43.275 figures that Buddy mentions, the religious and literary 32:43.275 --> 32:45.915 figures, we find Shakespeare. 32:45.920 --> 32:52.220 And I think Shakespeare in this train of figures represents the 32:52.220 --> 32:55.980 literary that is also the dramatic. 32:55.980 --> 33:02.890 So, in our tradition Shakespeare is the literary name 33:02.886 --> 33:05.406 above all others. 33:05.410 --> 33:10.780 It's important for Salinger that Shakespeare was a 33:10.775 --> 33:14.485 dramatist. It's important for this novel 33:14.486 --> 33:18.526 that Shakespeare was a dramatist, not just because 33:18.534 --> 33:23.414 Zooey wants Franny to inhabit acting fully as her desire and 33:23.409 --> 33:27.949 as her religious practice as opposed to saying the Jesus 33:27.953 --> 33:30.783 prayer. Acting has a deeper relation to 33:30.782 --> 33:33.862 the novel and here's where we get back to that question of 33:33.858 --> 33:36.608 being in closed spaces and the lack of movement. 33:36.609 --> 33:39.859 If you think about this novel, it has the structures of 33:39.861 --> 33:42.851 drama. It takes place in small rooms. 33:42.849 --> 33:48.389 If you begin to think about it, you can almost see the set 33:48.389 --> 33:52.859 changes: in the diner, on the train station. 33:52.859 --> 33:55.999 That's about the most open place, on the train platform. 33:56.000 --> 33:59.440 That's about the most open place we see. 33:59.440 --> 34:01.800 In the diner, in the apartment: 34:01.798 --> 34:06.748 all you do in the apartment is move from one room to another. 34:06.750 --> 34:08.740 These are dramatic spaces. 34:08.739 --> 34:13.369 Moreover, the bathroom: completely a dramatic space. 34:13.369 --> 34:20.189 It even has a curtain hiding Zooey from his mother. 34:20.190 --> 34:27.410 Acting becomes a religious practice for much more than 34:27.410 --> 34:35.310 Franny, not just for Franny and for Zooey 'cause Zooey's an 34:35.312 --> 34:40.812 actor too. It's a religious practice for 34:40.811 --> 34:43.041 the novel itself. 34:43.039 --> 34:47.539 And that, I would suggest to you, is where we can begin to 34:47.538 --> 34:51.638 bring some of those obvious things: the prevalence of 34:51.641 --> 34:54.621 dialog, those enclosed spaces, 34:54.624 --> 34:59.814 the tone, the exaggerated tone, the somewhat histrionic 34:59.812 --> 35:03.062 quality, the combativeness of that 35:03.057 --> 35:05.767 conversation, its sheer style. 35:05.770 --> 35:09.250 These are great talkers! 35:09.250 --> 35:12.510 But, I would suggest to you, Salinger is trying to 35:12.508 --> 35:14.658 balance something very carefully, 35:14.659 --> 35:18.279 that relates back to this question of doctrine versus 35:18.284 --> 35:21.774 syncretism in the religious sphere of the novel, 35:21.769 --> 35:25.079 in the religious thematic material of the novel. 35:25.079 --> 35:28.309 And, for this, I'd like to look at the very 35:28.309 --> 35:29.769 end of the novel. 35:29.770 --> 35:34.820 35:34.820 --> 35:41.570 Zooey finally suggests that it's attention to the audience 35:41.565 --> 35:46.885 that makes an actor really a special actor, 35:46.889 --> 35:52.429 a religious actor, and he points back to advice 35:52.432 --> 35:56.652 that Buddy gave him about--sorry, 35:56.650 --> 36:00.390 that Seymour had given him--about performing on a radio 36:00.385 --> 36:04.095 show. So, they were all radio show 36:04.101 --> 36:11.141 whiz kids, and one day Zooey had not wanted to shine his shoes 36:11.142 --> 36:15.762 and says--this is on page 200--that: 36:15.760 --> 36:18.500 "The announcer was a moron, the studio audience were 36:18.503 --> 36:20.383 all morons, the sponsors were morons, 36:20.380 --> 36:23.670 and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for 36:23.669 --> 36:25.069 them, I told Seymour. 36:25.070 --> 36:27.160 I said they couldn't see them anyway where we sat. 36:27.160 --> 36:29.230 He said to shine them anyway. 36:29.230 --> 36:32.690 He said to shine them for the Fat Lady." 36:32.690 --> 36:34.150 Now, why the Fat Lady? 36:34.150 --> 36:38.380 It's this mythical, incredibly humanly embodied-- 36:38.378 --> 36:41.988 whenever you see a fat lady in a novel, 36:41.989 --> 36:45.169 one of the first things you want to ask is: 36:45.172 --> 36:49.342 why does that person need to be excessively embodied? 36:49.340 --> 36:52.170 That's what fatness is in a novel like this. 36:52.170 --> 36:55.590 It's excessive embodiment, the human. 36:55.590 --> 36:58.030 That's what this woman represents, the human. 36:58.030 --> 37:04.160 Connect to the human audience; respect the human audience. 37:04.160 --> 37:06.820 Act for them, to them. 37:06.820 --> 37:11.620 Don't act as if they are just some bunch of Philistines out 37:11.623 --> 37:14.773 there who can't appreciate your art. 37:14.770 --> 37:22.010 And then he says to Franny: "I'll tell you a terrible 37:22.014 --> 37:23.724 secret. Are you listening to me? 37:23.719 --> 37:28.869 There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. 37:28.869 --> 37:31.749 That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy, 37:31.751 --> 37:34.771 and all his goddamn cousins by the dozens. 37:34.769 --> 37:38.949 There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. 37:38.950 --> 37:40.240 Don't you know that? 37:40.239 --> 37:43.099 Don't you know that goddamn secret yet? 37:43.099 --> 37:45.529 And don't you know--Listen to me, now. 37:45.530 --> 37:49.390 Don't you know who the Fat Lady really is? 37:49.390 --> 37:53.580 Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy, it's Christ Himself, 37:53.576 --> 37:56.346 Christ Himself, buddy." 37:56.349 --> 37:59.299 This seems like a completely Christian answer to Zooey's 37:59.295 --> 38:02.235 problem, and we're back on the horns of that dilemma. 38:02.239 --> 38:06.989 Is this a syncretic religious vision, or is it a Christian 38:06.989 --> 38:08.679 one? But look what follows. 38:08.680 --> 38:11.990 This is not the last word. 38:11.989 --> 38:14.299 For joy, apparently, it was all Franny 38:14.297 --> 38:16.977 could do to hold the phone even with both hands. 38:16.980 --> 38:20.060 For a foolish half minute or so there was no other words, 38:20.059 --> 38:22.529 no further speech, then "I can't talk anymore, 38:22.534 --> 38:24.614 buddy." The sound of a phone being 38:24.605 --> 38:26.405 replaced on its catch followed. 38:26.409 --> 38:31.019 Franny took in her breath slightly but continued to hold 38:31.021 --> 38:32.951 the phone to her ear. 38:32.949 --> 38:36.809 A dial tone of course followed the formal break in the 38:36.812 --> 38:39.742 connection. She appeared to find it 38:39.735 --> 38:44.795 extraordinarily beautiful to listen to, rather as if it were 38:44.804 --> 38:49.444 the best possible substitute for the primordial silence 38:49.443 --> 38:53.503 itself. The dial tone is that state of 38:53.497 --> 38:58.257 awareness of the divine that Buddy speaks of when he says- 38:58.262 --> 39:02.612 when he speaks of being with God before God said, 39:02.610 --> 39:04.270 "Let there be light." 39:04.269 --> 39:08.719 Zooey's voice breaking that dial tone in the beginning in 39:08.715 --> 39:12.205 his phone call, and then the resumption of it 39:12.209 --> 39:15.699 afterwards, that dial tone encases Zooey's 39:15.703 --> 39:20.163 voice, so that what Zooey says to her is one of the rays of 39:20.156 --> 39:23.686 light of God's creation, one of those things, 39:23.693 --> 39:26.773 like Shakespeare, that is part of the whole 39:26.766 --> 39:30.686 created world, but what Franny can tune into, 39:30.693 --> 39:35.433 after hearing his voice, is that very essential divine 39:35.434 --> 39:40.534 sound, meaningless sound. 39:40.530 --> 39:45.610 And so, this is how Salinger balances the syncretic, 39:45.605 --> 39:50.675 the sort of empty mysticism of Seymour and Buddy, 39:50.679 --> 39:55.309 with the embodied, doctrinal, specific insistence 39:55.313 --> 40:00.243 that we see from Zooey, from the insistence on human 40:00.235 --> 40:03.475 specificity, the Fat Lady, 40:03.484 --> 40:08.734 the very material human fleshly person. 40:08.730 --> 40:15.300 Salinger's own novel performs in this way, and that's how you 40:15.295 --> 40:21.195 would want to think about moments like on the bottom of 40:21.204 --> 40:22.084 180. 40:22.080 --> 40:26.070 40:26.070 --> 40:32.340 This is describing the bedroom of Seymour and Buddy as Zooey 40:32.340 --> 40:35.350 walks in. A stranger with a flair 40:35.352 --> 40:39.232 for cocktail party descriptive prose might have commented that 40:39.227 --> 40:41.017 the room, at a quick glance, 40:41.022 --> 40:44.182 looked as if it had once been tenanted by two struggling 40:44.178 --> 40:46.988 twelve-year-old lawyers or researchists. 40:46.989 --> 40:54.459 And then if you flip back to--let's see--172 describing 40:54.464 --> 40:59.454 Zooey's sweaty shirt, "His shirt was, 40:59.446 --> 41:05.256 in the familiar phrase, wringing wet." 41:05.260 --> 41:08.860 And there are lots of moments like this, self-conscious 41:08.862 --> 41:10.132 moments of style. 41:10.130 --> 41:13.020 So, "in the familiar phrase, 'wringing wet,'" he's saying, 41:14.840 --> 41:17.010 Here it is. There it is." 41:17.010 --> 41:22.350 He says someone with a flair for cocktail party conversation, 41:22.349 --> 41:25.019 a witticism, would say this. 41:25.019 --> 41:28.759 He gives it to us, but he frames it as an 41:28.759 --> 41:30.909 affectation of style. 41:30.909 --> 41:35.269 So, what Salinger, I think, shows us is that 41:35.265 --> 41:41.435 affectation, without something like love, is just affectation, 41:41.443 --> 41:45.093 and that's what Lane represents. 41:45.090 --> 41:48.450 That's the affectation of literature without any human 41:48.446 --> 41:50.936 connection. That's why when he talks on and 41:50.943 --> 41:54.023 on, it's as if Franny isn't even there listening to him. 41:54.019 --> 41:58.899 He's been going on a quarter hour, and he's just hitting his 41:58.896 --> 42:02.106 stride. Franny, Zooey, 42:02.111 --> 42:09.881 Buddy, Bessie: they all try to speak directly 42:09.878 --> 42:16.098 to each other. The family language is what 42:16.103 --> 42:21.283 makes them very human; they embody this very specific 42:21.283 --> 42:25.503 family language.And so, I would argue to you that 42:25.501 --> 42:30.531 Salinger imagines literature as a performance of this kind, 42:30.530 --> 42:35.880 a performance of a language of family love that is nevertheless 42:35.878 --> 42:38.378 also an aesthetic language. 42:38.380 --> 42:42.430 And I think, actually, probably the best 42:42.431 --> 42:46.381 image of that is in Seymour's diary. 42:46.380 --> 42:49.370 When Zooey sits down to make that phone call, 42:49.373 --> 42:53.663 he opens up Seymour's diary and he sees Seymour's account of his 42:53.659 --> 42:57.579 birthday celebration, where the family had put on a 42:57.576 --> 43:00.936 vaudeville show right in their living room. 43:00.940 --> 43:05.230 Remember, his parents are vaudevillians. 43:05.230 --> 43:09.280 And that description, which I won't read just because 43:09.276 --> 43:13.086 we're running out of time, it's on 181 and 182. 43:13.090 --> 43:14.530 You can look at it yourself. 43:14.530 --> 43:20.200 It's brimming with pleasure and love. 43:20.199 --> 43:28.049 This is why Buddy really can't insist that Zooey is wrong about 43:28.046 --> 43:34.996 this being a religious novel, because being a religious novel 43:35.001 --> 43:40.381 and being a love story are finally for Salinger the same 43:40.379 --> 43:45.159 thing. It's the performance of human 43:45.164 --> 43:47.764 connection. That's the phone line; 43:47.760 --> 43:51.700 that's conversation; that's letters. 43:51.699 --> 43:56.029 The performance of family conversation is like acting, 43:56.028 --> 43:59.538 and that is why Zooey impersonates Buddy; 43:59.540 --> 44:04.050 he's acting. But Franny can hear the 44:04.052 --> 44:07.662 specific voice, and this is when you know that 44:07.655 --> 44:11.415 Franny is not just a sort of empty air head. 44:11.420 --> 44:15.990 She may be mistaken about who she's praying to in the Jesus 44:15.993 --> 44:20.573 prayer, but she damn well knows the timbre of her brother's 44:20.567 --> 44:23.877 voice and his particularity of speech. 44:23.880 --> 44:26.250 And so, when he tries to imitate Buddy, 44:26.245 --> 44:28.295 she finds him out very quickly. 44:28.300 --> 44:33.140 And this is when you know that Franny really does benefit from 44:33.139 --> 44:37.819 Seymour and Buddy's religious education in the same way that 44:37.819 --> 44:41.109 Zooey has. And so, if we step back for 44:41.105 --> 44:45.245 a minute now from my reading, there are a couple of things I 44:45.247 --> 44:47.487 want to say. First of all, 44:47.493 --> 44:51.263 I hope you can see, using that as a model, 44:51.255 --> 44:56.575 how I went from big claims about the novel into specificity 44:56.578 --> 44:59.238 to support those claims. 44:59.239 --> 45:04.339 That's the structure of any good literary argument. 45:04.340 --> 45:09.480 The attention moves from the very small to the large and back 45:09.475 --> 45:12.125 again. There is a kind of rhythm to 45:12.129 --> 45:16.069 that, that folds in those obvious parts of the novel to a 45:16.068 --> 45:20.518 more thematic set of concerns, in this case about the 45:20.521 --> 45:24.011 religious philosophy of this novel. 45:24.010 --> 45:28.470 So, as you think about writing papers, go through that two-step 45:28.474 --> 45:32.874 process of thinking about the large picture of what a novel is 45:32.865 --> 45:35.525 doing as a piece of literary art, 45:35.530 --> 45:39.220 and then thinking about a focused set of concerns. 45:39.219 --> 45:42.439 And, in the final development of your paper, 45:42.436 --> 45:46.546 making sure that those two can relate to one another. 45:46.550 --> 45:50.030 The second thing I want to say is less about paper writing, 45:50.026 --> 45:53.496 and more about the trajectory of this course and what we're 45:53.502 --> 45:56.022 seeing in common between these novels. 45:56.019 --> 46:00.219 So, you can read this very closely to On the Road. 46:00.219 --> 46:06.589 If Dean cared for "nothing but for everything in 46:06.585 --> 46:13.455 principle," you could say, conversely, that Salinger cares 46:13.462 --> 46:18.702 for everything in particular, and in principle, 46:18.700 --> 46:24.580 nothingness. It's nothingness that is the 46:24.582 --> 46:29.642 mystical state rather than everythingness. 46:29.639 --> 46:33.249 And it's interesting to think about whether those two are 46:33.246 --> 46:34.466 really opposites. 46:34.469 --> 46:38.799 I think these novels imagined them to be opposites, 46:38.802 --> 46:44.002 but it's something for you to think about, about whether they 46:44.000 --> 46:47.600 really are. So, Zooey's specificity is the 46:47.603 --> 46:51.673 specificity of doctrine, but it's also the specificity 46:51.671 --> 46:55.511 and more importantly the specificity of person. 46:55.510 --> 47:01.030 So that's the everything that he cares about, 47:01.030 --> 47:03.240 person. I will stop there, 47:03.238 --> 47:07.008 and please bring both On the Road and Franny and Zooey 47:07.012 --> 47:08.692 to section this week. 47:08.690 --> 47:11.040 And, by the way, one last thing: 47:11.038 --> 47:14.978 If you've been sketchy about your section attendance, 47:14.977 --> 47:19.217 I suggest that you try to pull up your socks and go. 47:19.219 --> 47:23.959 We will be talking about papers in the section. 47:23.960 --> 47:26.870 It will be helpful to you, and it will also give you a 47:26.870 --> 47:30.000 chance to talk about these books, so please do go.