User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Nine Stories = For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories, J.D. SalingerNine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953.
It includes two of his most famous short stories, A Perfect Day for Bananafish and For Esmé – with Love and Squalor.
Nine Stories is the U.S. title; the book is published in many other countries as For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories.
Nine Stories:
A Perfect Day for Bananafish (1948),
Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (1948),
Just Before the War with the Eskimos (1948),
The Laughing Man (1949),
Down at the Dinghy (1949),
For Esmé – with Love and Squalor (1950),
Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes (1951),
De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period (1952),
and Teddy (1953).
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «دلتنگیهای نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم (نه داستان)»؛ «نه داستان»؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر (سلینجر)؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: در ماه سپتامبر سال 1998میلادی
عنوان: دلتنگیهای نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم (نه داستان)؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر (سلینجر)؛ مترجم: احمد گلشیری؛ تهران، پاپیروس، 1364؛ در263ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، ققنوس، 1377؛ چاپ سوم 1380؛ چهارم 1381؛ پنجم 1382؛ هفتم 1385؛ نهم 1386؛ دهم 1387؛ یازدهم 1388؛ دوازدهم 1389؛ شابک 9789643111564؛ موضوع: داستانهای کوتاه نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: نه داستان؛ نویسنده: جی.دی سالینجر (سلینجر)؛ مترجم: آسیه شهبازی؛ تهران، آوای مکتوب، 1394؛ در 224ص؛ شابک9786007364246؛
دلتنگیهای نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم، یا «نه داستان» در عنوان انگلیسی کتاب؛ نام مجموعه ای از داستانهای کوتاه «جروم دیوید سلینجر»، و شامل نه داستان کوتاه است؛ عنوان اصلی کتاب یا همان «نه داستان» به «دلتنگیهای نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم» تغییر داده شده است؛
عنوان داستانهای کوتاه مجموعه به ترتیب عبارتند از: («یک روز خوش برای موز ماهی»، «عمو ویگیلی در کانه تی کت»، «پیش از جنگ با اسکیموها»، «مرد خندان»، «انعکاس آفتاب بر تخته های بارانداز»، «تقدیم به ازمه با عشق و نکبت»، «دهانم زیبا و چشمانم سبز»، «دلتنگیهای نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم»، و «تدی»)؛
برای نخستین بار با ترجمه ی جناب آقای «احمد گلشیری»، در سال 1364هجری خورشیدی، و توسط انتشارات «ققنوس»، به چاپ رسید؛ سپس در سال 1381هجری خورشیدی، برای بار چهارم، و سالهای پس از آن نیز بارها تجدید چاپ شد
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 29/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
i know of three people who are totally obsessed with j.d. salinger:
john hinckley
mark david chapman
goodreads david
i know of four reasons why i (must) love this book:
1) because i don't want to see a list that looks like this:
ronald reagan
john lennon
goodreads brian
2) because in the early 80s salinger was a huge fan of the sitcom
mr. merlin which was based on the premise -- wait for it… wait for it... -- that merlin (yeah, that merlin) is alive and well in san francisco and working as a mechanic.
and it gets better: salinger became totally obsessed with elaine joyce, the lead actress from the show, and came out of hiding to track her down and date her.
joyce could later be seen on just about every single game show and… well, just watch this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HywZDx...
(yeah, you really gotta love charles nelson reilly)
i imagine salinger, lonely, smelly, the bottom of his too large t-shirt hard with encrusted sperm, top of it soft with drool… beard stubble, cat hair, spoiled milk, stale danish, waiting all week for the chance to tug at his old man penis to 23 minutes of mr. merlin, hoarsely shouting in anger and frustration as he’s about to ejaculate and they abruptly cut away from joyce to merlin. (thank god for tivo and being able to freeze frame or slo-mo marisa tomei without having to hoarsely shout at ethan hawke and phillip seymour hoffman)
so, it’s very funny, of course, but also incredibly human and poignant and tragic. and while the tendency is to ridicule salinger for falling for a third-rate sitcom actress, it can’t help but humanize and endear him to any of us who have totally, completely, and inexplicably fallen for someone…
3) because i'm a shameless contrarian and all you fuckers love to rag on the man. so i really wanted to love this book. and it wasn't difficult.
4) because it's great. these stories are great. and they don’t even feel like stories, but like nine strange impressionist sketches. i almost feel that each story should have started and ended with an ellipse... you kind of flow from one weird, fragmented sketch to the next -- from
the laughing man, which makes you feel more like a child than any story you’ve ever read, into
bananafish which is loaded with more stunning and surreal imagery than should be allowed in one story, and then to
Teddy’s strange world of cruise ships and fate and genius children…
get in the ring, motherfuckers!
Rating: really liked it
Post-war stories full of post-war syndromes… Psychologically subtle stories of grownups and children… And all the tales are rich in irony…
A Perfect Day for Bananafish is about traumatic post-war mental disorder…
“Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. “You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.”
“I don’t see any,” Sybil said.
“That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar. Very peculiar.” He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. “They lead a very tragic life…”
In
Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut two young women – old college friends – meet and get drunk…
Eloise had left college in the middle of her sophomore year, in 1942, a week after she had been caught with a soldier in a closed elevator on the third floor of her residence hall. Mary Jane had left – same year, same class, almost the same month – to marry an aviation cadet stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, a lean, air-minded boy from Dill, Mississippi, who had spent two of the three months Mary Jane had been married to him in jail for stabbing an M.P.
Just Before the War with the Eskimos is about strange workings of an adolescent girl’s consciousness…
The Laughing Man is a pre-war tale about the team of young boys and their adult chief, and also it is a story within story…
Down at the Dinghy is an account of the mother and her capricious son…
The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers. Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was – in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces – a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end.
For Esmé – with Love and Squalor is a case of the wartime nervous breakdown…
“No, you know the reason I took a pot shot at it, Loretta says? She says I was temporarily insane. No kidding. From the shelling and all.”
X threaded his fingers, once, through his dirty hair, then shielded his eyes against the light again. “You weren’t insane. You were simply doing your duty. You killed that pussycat in as manly a way as anybody could’ve, under the circumstances.”
Clay looked at him suspiciously. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“That cat was a spy. You had to take a pot shot at it. It was a very clever German midget dressed up in a cheap fur coat. So there was absolutely nothing brutal, or cruel, or dirty, or even –”
In
Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes we meet an unfaithful wife and her lover,
De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period is about a brief touch of an aspiring young artist with the world of fine art and
Teddy is tale of a whizz kid who is some kind of a spiritual freak…
Children live in their own imaginary world. Grownups live in their own illusory world.
Rating: really liked it
If I can get serious for a moment, and cast aside the brittle, smartassed, persona that the social networking aspect of goodreads tends to bring out, I'd like to try to express what it is that drives me in this life. It is the following belief, instilled primarily by my mother, an exceptionally smart woman who never suffered fools gladly, but had the mitigating grace to be one of the warmest, most generous women you could ever hope to meet, as well as having one of the greatest voices you can imagine (Buttercup)
Here's the main thing she taught me: each of us has an inescapable responsibility to take whatever talent we have been given on this earth, and to develop it as far and as well as life allows.
This is so deeply ingrained in my beliefs that I can pretty much trace every major decision I've made in my life back to it.
What does this have to do with the price of eggs? Well, it's the reason Jerome David Salinger makes me as mad as all get out. Because I can certainly understand why, given the perfection of the stories in this collection, any writer might not want to risk spoiling his reputation by following up with work that might not reach the same level. Hell, nothing could possibly reach the perfection of the stories, "For Esme - with Love and Squalor", "The Laughing Man", "Down by the Dinghy", or "Just Before the War with the Eskimos". And while I'm not really a great fan of Seymour Glass, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is pretty damned awesome as well.
So, yeah, J.D. - after those stories, it's hard to imagine anything better. Even anything comparable.
But that's still no excuse for not trying, you arrogant egotistical bastard. You were dealt a monumental, unimaginable, talent. And for you to squat there in-fucking-communicado in your bloody bunker in New England, resting on your admittedly golden freaking laurels, is an act of unconscionable, unpardonable, selfishness. I could almost convince myself that your genius crossing over into madness was the explanation for your lack of output, but you seem craftily able to sic your lawyers on anyone perceived to encroach on your goddamned "privacy".
So, while I can understand the impulse of not wanting to risk your reputation, I sure as hell can't forgive it. You were granted an incredible gift. You should be using it.
And, sorry folks, it's far beyond me to locate exactly where the genius lies in the particular stories mentioned. You really just need to read them for yourselves.
Rating: really liked it
Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.
Nine Stories ~~ J.D. Salinger
Oh Mr. Salinger, why couldn’t you have published more of these amazing stories in your life time??? Nine Stories -- a collection of brilliant short stories from J.D. Salinger. It is in this collection where the Glass family, the main constituents of
Franny and Zooey, is first introduced. In the next eight stories, we meet and get to know characters with an assortment of mental and physical ailments, and self-discoveries.
This is my second journey with Salinger after
Franny and Zooey. My favorites here are
To Esme – With Love and Squalor, The Laughing Man, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period, and
Teddy. A shared thread through all nine stories is the mood of desperation, of frustration, and of higgledy-piggledy identities. The characters are very real; these are real people with real issues starting to overspill into their everyday lives.
These stories haunt me. I found
To Esme – With Love and Squalor a story about the effects of war on an individual stayed with me for days. It’s so simply written, and yet, packs so much emotion and observation on the state of war and the mental and physical drain it can take on one person. From the one line note about a twitch on the face, to a shaky hand, the subtle differences from the first half of the story to the second half create an overall dreadful vision.
What is
De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period -- loneliness, isolation, misrepresentation, reinvention, escape, connection? Who is Jean De Daumier-Smith -- we never really know since this the name the narrator calls himself. The fact that we never know Jean’s real name is significant; it serves to highlight the idea of misrepresentation and reinvention. Jean appears to be uncomfortable with who he is and by changing his name Salinger allows Jean to reinvent himself. The trigger for Jean wishing to reinvent himself stems from the loneliness and isolation that he feels possibly due to his mother’s death. By reinventing himself, Jean is able to escape from the painful realities of the world around him. We, all of us, can relate.
This collection of stories should be read over and over again. When I next read these stories I’ll discover something new about one of the characters or catch a new allusion or reference. What insights will I glean about the Glass family?
I could go on forever about the themes here. I could write pages about these people. I wonder where Esme is now. What will become of Teddy? Does the Chief find love and is he actually The Laughing Man?
It's what's left unsaid here that really intrigues. Words may go unuttered, but still one hopes ...
Rating: really liked it
This is as good of a short story collection that one could hope to find. Salinger was a heck of a writer, certainly well known for his classic, The Catcher in the Rye, but there is much more out there, like this little jewel for example. I give this 5 stars on the strength of two stories alone, but they all were good. The two stories I mention are A Perfect Day for Bananafish, and For Esme - With Love And Squalor. Both have themes involving troubled soldiers returning from World War II. Salinger's experiences in the war certainly influenced his writing, and may have been partly responsible for his reclusiveness for the last 45 years of his life.
Update: September 2017 is the release of the movie "Rebel in The Rye", which is based on the autobiography J.D. Salinger: A Life by Kenneth Slawenski. I look forward to reading the book and seeing the movie to learn more about this interesting man.
Rating: really liked it
I bought this collection in college after an overnight work shift, having not even realized it existed until I saw it on the shelf at the Borders Books and Music (RIP, amazing book chain) near my apartment. I was thrilled and texted a bunch of people all naively saying "did you know Salinger wrote a short story book!?" They all did, of course, but the weird part was that when I woke up to all the reply texts after having fallen asleep reading the book, they were all saying "woah, he actually just died today."
So I've always felt like Salinger was so outraged by my Salinger ignorance that he up and died. Sorry all.
But this is a fantastic collection.
To Esme – With Love and Squalor and
The Laughing Man were the big standouts to me. Much of his best writing is in here and the collection is a perfect catalyst to his themes across a collection of beautiful gems that flow thematically.
Rating: really liked it
If kidnappers had snatched up J D Salinger some time in the early 1970s, driven like madmen through the night and the next day too and imprisoned him in a small but pleasant room somewhere near Boise, furnished him with with all mod cons, and told him he wasn't going anyplace soon until he'd finished at the very least another nine stories, and at best three or four complete novels; and if the kidnappers - due to an endearing cocktail of naivete and compassion (because you know they were just literature fans like you and me, not blank-eyed killers, and they weren't entirely convinced about this whole caper to begin with let it be said) let JD go for long walks (to get inspiration, but really to beat on a nearby farmhouse door and call the cops); and if they were then rounded up (not too hard, said the cops) and put on trial - not a jury in the land would have convicted them.
When the prosecution rested and the defence opened, their lawyer would simply have issued a copy of Nine Stories to all 12 jurors and said "Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case."
This is not to say that each of the Nine is such a great golden glowing nugget of controlled power, insight and wisdom (some are) but that the whole is such eloquent proof of the perspicacity, intelligence and all-round humanbeingness of JDS that reading this collection is very bittersweet - how lovely it all is, and how very little of it there is, when duller, pudgier-fingered writers type on, and on, and publish, and publish.
Anyone who has encountered comments by myself on Ye Olde Catcher in Ye Rye will now accuse me of inconsistency, or at least, be expecting me to accuse JDS of the same. How can I hate the novel for its unbearable whine and Johnny-one-note somebody-shut-him-up-please tiresomeness and yet enjoy all the rest of JDS as I do? They're cut from the same cloth, it's not like Picasso's blue period and Picasso the cubist which could have been different guys, or the Velvet Underground's first and third albums which could have been a different band. But I've come across this in different areas of the universe - can't stand Tom Waits until Swordfishtrombones, think he's a genius for three albums, then can't stand him again. Shakespeare's tragedies - oui! Shakespeare's comedies - er, non! So maybe not that unusual.
JDS famously published all his stuff between 1951 and 1963 and then STOPPED. (Which is why the kidnappers pounced, they gave him a good ten year rest and that was ENOUGH to their way of thinking.) And he stopped just as things were getting really interesting. He writes of the murderous conformities of American educated middle-class life and of the outcasts and especially young kids who either subvert this button-down world or bail out swiftly. Just as he stopped publishing things began to change. the 60s began swinging, and the youthquake (as it has been termed) was upon us. Just the very stuff that you might have thought would have fascinated JD. What do the kids do when they try to make their own rules up? I feel the absence of JDS throughout the 60s and 70s, as i feel the absence of another American writer who STOPPED in 1963, Sylvia Plath. I want to know what these two clever clogs would have made of the tumultuous ten years which followed the self-stilling of their voices.
But back to the Nine Stories - and to steal a fellow reviewer's catch-phrase:
Is it a classic?
Answer : Yes. Goddamn!
PS : I realise I also speculated upon the advisability of kidnapping Thomas Bernhard elsewhere but that was to save the world from any further novels like Extinction, whereas the JD Salinger kidnap is for the opposite reason. But I would like to publicly state that I do not condone the imprisonment of any writers for any reasons, so please don't try this at home.
Rating: really liked it
If I were more put together, I’d have nine tiny one-sentence reviews for this and talk about each story, but I’m not, and so as is it’s a miracle that I have any notes on it at all and also am writing this less than three months after reading it.
I always know if I REALLY like a book that is of VERY high quality if it makes me miss being in literature classes. This one, for example, made me desperately wish I were in one so I could debate “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” for at LEAST one million years.
But alas, I am a genius and therefore no longer in college.
Plus I don’t think I ever would have read this in any class anyway.
Some of these stories didn’t work for me but I REALLY liked some of them, as indicated above. Salinger writes so gorgeously, and there are some truly lovely characters here - Esmé and Charles, Teddy, the Glass family.
It is a very small book of very small stories that I liked very much.
Bottom line: What I just said!
---------
earlier, i stated that i am J.D. Salinger trash.
this statement is confirmed.
review to come / 4 stars
Rating: really liked it
Adverbs. It's all because of adverbs that I read this collection. I asked a wonderful teacher of mine about adverbs (whether to use them, and all that), and the main gist of his answer was: "Read
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. He's the master of the adverb."
Good lord, he is. The almost 200 page collection is positively (see what I did there?) LITTERED with them. One beautifully (ha!) placed adverb after the next. In one paragraph I counted five. Five gorgeous adverbs in a single, solitary paragraph. And it works - oh, how it works -
magnificently. (Take that, Stephen King.)
Besides the adverbs, I found two of the most incredible short stories I've ever read:
A Perfect Day for Bananafish and
For Esmé - with Love and Squalor. Both of these stories left me with a catch in my throat, my pulse racing (and not just because of the adverbs), and a compulsion to peel the pages back and re-experience the power and emotions through this man's cunningly chosen words. I tried to explain
Esmé to my mother and found myself choking up with tears.
Interestingly (I could do this all day), both stories are similar, though one is devastating and the other hopeful. Both involve a post WWII soldier suffering from PTSD. Both involve the absolute delightful innocence of a child. Both feature the most perfect dialogue. Actually, all of the nine stories feature dialogue. I'm going to have to re-read this one day, just to study the dialogue. One of the stories is almost 100% one side of a telephone call. I mean, this guy was brilliant. I just wish he'd written more.
Not all the stories contain the potency of the two I mentioned. But each story deserves to be read thoughtfully and enjoyed fully, methodically, even reverently.
5 stars, for Esmé.
Rating: really liked it
Nine Stories by J.D Salinger "There are nine deep, enigmatic narratives. It is always about the motives of childlike innocence, the adult world and the invaders of war in the lives of individuals and the isolation of a traumatized man. I was surprised that some stories bored me, although literary quality can be no doubt. Salinger's dialogues are fabulous, the course of the stories consistent. It's the portrait of an absolutely static Society.
3,5/5
Rating: really liked it
Salinger's "Nine Stories" should be renamed "How to Write Short Stories." While many hold up "Catcher in the Rye" as the zenith of his achievements for me it will always be this wistful and brave little book. I re-read it two or three times or year. I love it that much.
To be honest out of the nine stories collected here I would say that only a third are Salinger's best. "Perfect Day for Banafish," "For Esme - With Love and Squalor," and "The Laughing Man" are to me the peaks of short fiction. Everything that Salinger does best he does in these three tales. Nobody wrote children better than him. They leap off the page at you right into your lap. Esme, her brother, Seymour's little friend and the narrator of "Laughing Man" are so vivid and real you feel like running them all down the street for ice cream and cake. They are that true to life.
Same goes for Seymour in "Banana Fish" and the narrator of "For Esme." Nobody got into the heads of brilliant but troubled young people better than Salinger. What we hear about Seymour as opposed to what we see creates a palpable (and beautiful)tension. The narrator of "For Esme"'s war inflicted emotional problems are drawn with such artistry as to flood over you as you read.
"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut," "Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," and "War with the Eskimos" to me fall into the "damn entertaining but not great" category. These stories are beautifully observed, funny, poignant and always a pleasure to read but lack that magic the first three have to spare. Of course that being said even being good but not great Salinger makes them better than most.
Finally "Teddy," "Down in the Dinghy" and "Pretty Mouth Green My Eyes" are good stories but I feel they suffer from being collected in the same book as the others. Each alone is enthralling but not a one of them is a patch on "Esme," or "Bananafish." Where the other stories feel like a full meal these come off more like snacks. Tasty but not quite filling.
If you like Salinger and want to read something by him that won't make you want to shoot a president or a sixties rock star this my friend is the book for you.
Rating: really liked it
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger may be one of the best collections of short stories that I have read. It was clear from the opening story,
A Perfect Day for Bananafish, followed by
Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut, that this was the writing of probably one of the greatest authors of the twentieth century. And my favorite was
For Esme--with Love and Squalor.Quite a few years ago, when I became interested in the literary works of J.D. Salinger, I read what was touted as the definitive biography by David Shields,
Salinger. I found the book riveting, particularly the graphic portrayals of Salinger's experiences during World War II, including the landing on Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and all that ensued. Salinger also fought in the Battle of the Bulge near the end of the war and was also among the first soldiers to enter the recently liberated concentration camp at Dachau, Germany. Salinger, like so many others, was deeply affected by his experiences during the war and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. The effects of this PTSD informed his writing from then on. And never was it so striking as in this treasure of short stories, many of them written for
The New Yorker.This was such a compelling book by one of our master literary authors of the twentieth century. A humble salute, not only to J.D. Salinger's literary expertise but to his humanity and service to our country. I was so touched by his writing in a foxhole while the bombs were falling all around. And I know that one of his favorite authors was Ernest Hemingway, who we know had a typewriter in his foxhole as they both gave us some of the greatest literature of the twentieth century. Thank you.
Rating: really liked it
I haven't read any Salinger in many years and this was on my shelf for over a year before I actually read it. I'm so glad I finally picked it up.
Each story was a good length, entertaining and clever. Overall these were my kinds of short stories
I also liked how they related to Salingers other work including Franny and Zooey
Rating: really liked it
I was sitting at my cube farm today, moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another, cursing the internet tracking that keeps me from daytime Goodreading and daydreaming of pixies and unicorns when I received an email from my wife that utterly rocked my world. ":( Salinger's dead," read the short missive, and with that my world grew a little more gray. Normally news of celebrity death does little but placate my immense Schadenfreude, but Salinger's death is a serious blow to me and I feel compelled to emote all over my computer screen (don't worry, I have tissues).
Who remembers the moment when they first fell
passionately in love with reading? I'm not talking about when you realized that reading was enjoyable, or a good distraction from your family, or a great way to spend a sunny day in the park. I'm talking about when you realized that this was it: life could throw anything at you and, as long as you had reading, you could cope and move on. That rather than simply entertaining, your world could be expanded and fleshed out by what you glean through a page- that this great human fuck-up can best be understood by placing yourself within the head of strangers and seeing the world through their eyes for a time.
I can chart the exact instant this thought struck me- when I first finished reading Salinger's
Nine Stories, particularly the utterly heart-breaking "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." To this day this book is still my favorite of his limited oeuvre and a surefire contender for Top 5 favorites of all time. While he is deservedly renowned for Holden Caulfield's teen angst, it is the subtle pathos of
Nine Stories that marks him as an author without equal.
The alienated Seymour Glass, who I always pictured as a stand-in for Salinger himself, and his tragic inability to connect with anyone but young children. The prescient Teddy, whose thinly-veiled Buddhism came years before the Beats began reading Suzuki. Esme, Charles and the damaged Sergeant X- all three of whom I feel an unceasing tenderness for. The idolized Chief and the heartbreak of Mary Hudson. All of these stories I can return to again and again, myself changed by the passing of time, and find something new and rewarding to take from them. Whether it is his absolutely perfect dialogue (I know of no other author who so accurately captures the rhythm and cadence of speech), his impulse (need?) to include a death in nearly all of his stories as if to remind us that even imaginary friends can get hit by buses, his endless attempts to put into words the passive disconnection from the rest of humankind that we all, at one point or other, feel overwhelmed by. There is more literary merit in this slim volume than the whole New York Times bestseller list.
I've often harbored the dream of hanging out in Salinger's tiny New Hampshire village and somehow attracting the eye of the reclusive author- carrying groceries across the street or some such menial chore. We would get to talking and he would offer to read some of my meager works and, wonder of wonders, offer a few words of advice. You know, Daydreaming 101. Sadly this will never be. If there is a bright side to this tragic passing, it is that hopefully he’s been writing feverishly for the past 60 years and his estate will begin posthumously publishing. This is the only real kind of immortality available, and hopefully Salinger's words will be read for centuries to come.
