literati 24/7

I just finished rereading Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger.  For those who don’t know, the plot centres on a girl, Franny, who has a nervous breakdown over religious prayer. She goes home and her brother, Zooey, manages to help her find peace. 

Even though the story is about siblings shades of it remind me of Rory and Jess.  Aside from the pair’s fondness for the text (”I wanted to see if she has Franny and Zooey.  She does,”), Rory goes through her own crisis in Season 6.  While it’s not as extreme, nor for the same reasons, Rory presses herself to be a certain kind of person.  Disappointed in her first year at Yale and failed relationships, Rory tries to act more cool and casual, less ‘mouse-like’ for Logan (who happens to remind me a lot of Franny’s boyfriend, Lane).  After she is told she can’t be a real journalist by Logan’s father, Rory goes into a spiral of depression.  She drops out of school, stops talking to Lorelai and drifts around Emily’s house, joining the DAR.  She is desperate to seem in control and not vulnerable, and it is only Jess who is able to break her free.  He doesn’t give her real advice - he simply asks what has happened, and why Rory is acting the way she does - but it’s enough to give her the courage to go back.

In Franny and Zooey, Zooey tells Franny she needs to not worry so incessantly, as it is through living that she is being spiritual.  While Rory’s crisis is not about spirituality, it is about a way of living and how she projects herself. Jess’s simple words that she is not being herself, and has lost who she is, shocks Rory into realising she’s trying to be someone she isn’t, and she’s able to put her life back together.