gfxkid

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.

2022-10-01 18:28