From the shot of Joan looking out over the parapet there is a slow dissolve to a matching shot of her Resurrected self in a N e w York office a few months later. H e r agent is reading Joan's latest manuscript, based on her real-life adventures. It's apparent from every choice on the screen that Joan W i l d e r has changed, that in some way she has hit bottom, died, and been emotionally reborn. T h e manuscript has brought the hard-hearted agent to tears. She pronounces it by far Joan's best book, and notes that it was completed very quickly. T h e Ordeals of the Special W o r l d have made Joan a better writer, and she looks better as well, more "together" than we've ever seen her. 210 THE RESURRECTION At the end of the scene, Joan is put through a final emotional test. T h e agent
if it were wholly nonredundant. Anyone who knows English will know the rules of spelling and grammar and pronunciation that help engender its redundancy, and he will know these rules prior to the receipt of any new text in the language. This is almost tautological: it is only the existence of such rules that makes communication possible. If a hearer interprets "to" to mean "from," he will not understand very much. If he pronounces a written m as /v/, a t as /s/, and so on, he will not get through to his listeners. These redundant elements, these rules, may be considered the invariant portion of language. They may not be changed without loss of comprehension. But one may say what he wishes as long as he follows them. They are the preexistent mold into which the free-will portion of a communication is poured. Hence the enormous range of texts, from laws to poems, in the same language—which is to say, following the same
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