Book Review – Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger
A Post-War Attitude and Esoteric Self-Interest Hamper This Collection
May 12, 2009
The problem with J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories (Little Brown, ISBN: 0316767727, 1953) has nothing to do with the stories not being well-written. They’re very well-written, solid pieces of prose that avoid all problems, major or minor. Salinger’s voice is fully developed, making the stories highly readable. That’s not to say the stories are great, though.
Occasionally, They are Great
Occasionally, they are great, as a story like “The Laughing Man” follows what seems to be a typical Salinger technique of someone telling someone else’s story (or telling it in such a way that it’s actually theirs, playing with connections between the characters and the story being told). It’s definitely the smartest and most carefully crafted story in the collection, along with “For Esme—With Love and Squalor.”
Both stories use traditional storytelling to tell their tales, which is clever. It’s how “The Laughing Man” goes from paralleling a break-up and a crimefighter to paralleling both of those things with a move from the innocence of childhood. It’s how “For Esme” goes from a cute Audrey Hepburn type story into something much darker and lovesick, if not a bit too melodramatic.
A Post-War Society
The quaint, idiosyncratic humor and mentality of a post-war society loom over these mid-century stories, working to their advantage occasionally (“A Perfect Day For Bananafish” and the ten-pages-too-long “De Damier-Smith’s Blue Period”), but mainly just dating them and making the outcomes and overall stories seem uneventful (“Uncle Wiggly In Connecticut,” “Just Before the War With the Eskimos”) or – even worse – pointless (“Down at the Dinghy”).
“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” reads like mediocre Hemingway with it’s feelings of tension between couples in a “recovering nation.” There’s already enough mediocre Hemingway thanks to Hemingway himself, and while there is a desire to like the story, it turned out to be rather inconsequential, save for the last line where Salinger uses the same type of finish-line twist found in “Bananafish,” “Uncle Wiggly,” “Eskimos,” and “The Laughing Man.” While it is definitely done to a better effect in “Pretty Mouth,” it ended up being much of the same.
Rhetorical Philosophy in “Teddy”
“Teddy” is perhaps the second most interesting story in the collection (“Bananafish” is the first, as the ending is both surprising and appropriate). It deals with rhetorical philosophy through the musings of a ten-year-old prodigy who lives in a dysfunctional family. The boy could have just as easily been older, and his youth binds innocence and childhood with a bit of a heavy hand.
The story starts of funnily enough, with each family member carrying on a different conversation while trying to get the others to listen. By the time the reader hits the fat of the story, however, it all begins to read like a base-level, Reader’s Digest explanation of terministic screens and vague existentialism.
Overall, the Collection is Average
Overall, the collection is average: “Bananafish” and “The Laughing Man” are both fantastic, “For Esme” is quite good at blending craft and the fourth wall of craft, and “Blue Period” is surprisingly tolerable (though making the French look like snooty jerks seems like a cheap shot in any era).
While others may champion this collection for its “nice” writing and ties to the Glass family drama, it fails to go beyond slightly-above-mediocre if a reader is not tied up in who’s narrating “Bananafish” or why Walt Glass mattered.
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