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Stories that leave you wondering..."what?"

Customer Rating:
I really wanted to like this book. Many of the reviewers for this book have spoken rapturously of it, and I can tell that a great number of them are well-read and articulate people. I was hoping I would like this book because I enjoyed "Franny and Zooey" and looked forward to hearing more about the Glass family, among others, but this was not the case.

With the exception of "A Perfect Day for a Bananafish," I found most of these stories opaque and difficult to make sense of afterwards. The stories generally follow this arc: An ambiguous and interesting situation is presented, but the ending arrives abruptly and is completely different (and seemingly unrelated) to whatever happened. I gave myself a week before reviewing this book to check if I had any interpretations of the stories that might develop. I didn't. I just found the endings random and inferior to the rest of the story. I understand that life itself is frequently random, but it isn't the same as reading a story in which you can usually detect some kind of connection between events, or at least a larger statement about what just happened. I don't expect the central nugget of a story to be immediately legible, but I just never figured out what Salinger was thinking here.

Many describe Salinger as a genius, and he may well be, but his reputation surely does not rest upon this book. If you would like to read it, approach it without any ideas of "genius" or "greatness". Salinger's reputation often precedes him, so try to avoid that here to give it a fair shot. You may even like it, and if you have some ideas about the endings that I missed, please share them in the comments - the book is not very long at all and can be read comfortably in a weekend or medium-length plane ride.

Mediocre

Customer Rating:
J.D. Salinger is the Terence Malick of the writing world, save that his art is not as productive and not as qualitatively good as Malick. Both men are acquired tastes to most, both are notoriously reclusive, with Malick readying only his fourth film in a third of a century this year, while Salinger has managed to only proffer three readily available literary works in his nearly sixty year long career- that being the criminally overrated The Catcher In The Rye- a good- but nowhere near great- novel, the hit and miss Franny And Zooey, and the collection of short stories known as Nine Stories, which has a reputation of being, along with James Joyce's Dubliners, one of the great short story collections of all times. In a word- not. That's not to say that there are not some brief moments of greatness, but Salinger seems to be one of those people who for whatever reasons has found a critical niche, that a devoted following idolizes, and has exploited it fully. Although it's been decades since his last published works his name still regularly ranks with the top writers of the 20th Century, and his reclusive nature is enough to make Greta Garbo seem a rank amateur by comparison. To me, this is as inexplicable as the mystery of Harper Lee's canonization for To Kill A Mockingbird- another good book that's vastly overrated, although its reasons for overpraise are far more obvious due to the progressive racial angle of the work....These Nine Stories are hermetic 1950ish tales, whose `humor' is more based upon the fact that they are written in an oddly exclusive fifty to sixty year old idiom than being truly comic portrayals of human frailties. They are also strangely void of any real deep philosophy or insight; instead being mired in the then-current Freudian and pseudo-Freudian machinations thought to motivate real people, yet which have hooked deeply into the psyche of many readers, despite their absurdity. Yet, there is a certain critic-proof quality to the tales because of this near-fetishism not of the actual writing, but the meta-idea of what the writing is deemed to be about and represent. This is because it is rare, in the criticism of Salinger that I've read, that what the stories actually are about and/or accomplish, are addressed. Instead, there is a cultic quality to the ogling of the Glass and Caulfield families, partly buttressed and abetted by Salinger's own weird public persona's bizarre appeal- think Howard Hughes or Michael Jackson, wherein a member of either clan could pick their nose or suck their thumb (with or without booger attached) and Salingerians would insist that some cosmic relevance or Oriental or Zen symbolism was afoot, merely because of the way the character's finger plumbed their nostril. This also allows Salingerians to pummel those who are not as impressed, with the writing of their hero, as being shallow or unenlightened, rather than merely able to see the limitations and flaws that are manifest to all but the devoted. Salinger is held up as a veritable godhead of anti-materialism and shallowness, yet this is not only a simplification, but an outright misread. Salinger is not a prophet against shallowness, rather an advocate of a different form of shallowness- intellectual shallowness to narcotize one from life's pain, rather than the more manifest spiritual shallowness. Just look at characters like Esmé- she's a phony, and even Teddy McArdle is a boor in the making. On top of that, Salinger is also a satirist, a point even his greatest admirers miss, although his satire is sometimes lame, and is taken for `realism' by those enamored of stereotypes. Yet, these very misreads lend a cultic quality to Salinger's work, and this sort of non-critical adoration is what many writers seem to want for their own work, but the truth is such personal fawning obscures any work, and instills an artistic reliance on things not actually present in the body of the artwork to define it. This is a dangerous precedent for any art or artist, and not something to be encouraged.

Not being subject to such blinders, though, I can state that my final verdict is that J.D. Salinger is a vastly overrated writer, wont to weak and predictably contrived and mechanical endings, quite insular, and non-universal- the perfect prerequisites for a cultic figure- but that does not mean he is not a good writer, by any means, just not nearly as great as his most deluded cultists believe.

Salinger's Little Worlds

Customer Rating:
This is a collection of short stories and vignettes which act as snapshots of the lives of the characters within them. Some are rather short and feel a bit incomplete or idle, but I think this was intended by Salinger so as to not bog down the reader with overt themes or ideology and simply to show moments in peoples' lives. I'm thinking particularly of 'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut', 'Just Before the War with the Eskimos', 'Down at the Dingy' and 'Pretty Mouth and Green Eyes' when I say that some of the stories feel a little light on purpose. Still, they are well-written and worth reading. The remaining stories are all rather touching, each in its own peculiar way, and rival 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Franny and Zooey' as Salinger's very best works.

'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' depicts a young man recently discharged from WWII on vacation with his wife, who spends the entirety of the story on the phone with her mother discussing her husband's mental state and reassuring her that he isn't completely dangerous. The husband, the main character, is rather indifferent and distant and only brightens up when he is talking with a toddler-aged girl with whom he swims in the ocean and tells the tragic tale of the bananafish.

'For Esme with Love and Squalor' wins the award both for best title and best story in the collection (rivaled closely by 'Teddy'). It is about a young American soldier who is in training in England not long before the Invasion of Normandy. He keeps to himself and seems to be a rather reflective guy, walking around this small English town. He meets a very young girl, maybe 13 or 14, who is having tea with her family in a cafe. She sits down with him and they share a very personal and odd conversation in which she asks him to write to her from the front and also to write her a story-- preferably "about squalor". The dialogue and strange connection between these two people, who are from rather separate worlds, shows the way people can unexpectedly find each other and have a surprising, almost spiritual connection.

'Teddy', the final story in the book, is about an extremely precocious 6 year old boy who is a dedicated Buddhist and is convinced that he has been reincarnated. He is being studied by scientists and psychologists who marvel at his intelligence and spiritual insights and who, unable to help themselves upon learning that he believes he can predict the future, demand to know their future and when they might die. The boy is on a cruise ship with his parents, an eccentric and somewhat cynical couple. He wanders off on his own and has a long conversation with a man on the deck of the ship in which he casually predicts his own death just before it occurs and finishes the story. This story is really about the conflict between logic and spirituality, the clash between the rational and irrational world. It's one of the most interesting discussions of spirituality and eastern religion that I've encountered.

Nine Stories More Than Just Bananafish

Customer Rating:
Nine Stories is a famous collection. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" has lost none of its power to shock. To experience the vitality and humor of Seymour's conversation with the little girl on the beach - the ending is sad and inexplicable, and of course the Glass family is terribly wounded as a result. This story is a must-read, but so is "For Esmé with Love and Squalor" (a moving story about traumatic stress and the healing power of love,) and "Teddy," a unique and funny story about a 10-year old genius who has a very old soul.

Salinger Hits Nine Home Runs.

Customer Rating:
Published after The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories is quintessential Salinger. Having first read Salinger's collection of Nine Stories as a college student, these short stories have remained in my thoughts for years.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (first published in the The New Yorker, January 31, 1948) tells the story of war veteran Seymour Glass, who commits suicide while on his honeymoon with his wife, Muriel, in Florida. While Muriel discusses fashion with her mother at the hotel bar, suicidal Seymour sits on the beach with an innocent young girl, Sybil, who becomes fascinated with him. Rating: A perfect 5/5.

"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (first published in the The New Yorker, March 20, 1948) tells the story of suburban housewife, Eloise, still haunted by the death of Walt Glass, who was killed in an explosion during the war. As suggested by the subtle sideways glance of a drunken friend, Eloise has never recovered from Walt's death. This is a story as relevant today as when it was first published sixty years ago. Rating: 5/5.

"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948) tells the story of two high school classmates, Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, in a dispute over money. Ginnie and Selena play tennis together every Saturday, but Selena never offers to pay for their cab. When Ginnie confronts her, Selena explains, "It may interest you to know . . . that my mother is very ill." After meeting Selena's brother Franklin (who offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich) and his friend Eric at Selena's apartment, Ginnie has a sudden change of heart about the cab fare. Rating: 5/5.

"The Laughing Man" (first published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1949) tells a story within a story about a nine-year-old, who (along with his fellow "Comanches") would spend afternoons with "the Chief" (a Staten Island law student). At the end of each day, the Chief would tell them a new chapter in his on-going serial about a deformed criminal, which ultimately becomes the story of his doomed relationship with his summer girlfriend. Rating: 5/5.

"Down at the Dinghy" tells the story of Boo Boo Glass's peculiar young son, Lionel, who overhears a house servant, Sandra, refer to his father as a "big sloppy kike." Rating: 5/5.

"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" (first published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950) tells the story of Army Sergeant X (Buddy Glass?), who reminisces over a young girl, Esmé, who helped him to endure the squalor of WWII. He promises to correspond with Esmé and to write a story in her honor, but then suffers an emotional breakdown. This story becomes Sergeant X's recovery. Rating: 5/5.

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" tells the story of two lawyers, in which one is distracted from a romantic evening with his love interest by his friend's midnight phone call about his missing wife. His troublesome wife, we learn, has failed to return home from a party. Rating: 5/5.

"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" tells the humorous story of a newly- hired art teacher at a correspondence "art academy," who falls hopelessly in love with a religious painting, the work of his sole pupil (a nun). Rating: 4/5.

"Teddy" (first published in The New Yorker, January 31, 1953) tells the story of a ten-year-old genius, Teddy McArdle. Revealing that he is wise beyond his years, Teddy discusses the very nature of existence with a graduate student, Nicholson, on board an oceanliner. Teddy recalls a previous life in which he was a man in India who was "making very nice spiritual advancement," but stopped praying upon meeting a woman. Teddy envisions his own death by being pushed into the empty pool by his sister. The haunting story ends with "an all-piercing, sustained scream--clearly coming from a small, female child." Rating: 5/5.

In Seymour: An Introduction, Salinger's fictional character, Buddy Glass, claims he wrote this story and several others in Nine Stories. Kurt Vonnegut has called each of these stories a "home run."

G. Merritt