I liked these stories for the most part! Some really good ones, most of them better than I expected. He is much more interesting to read for characters and subliminal messaging rather than plot.

"The Laughing Man" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor" were probably my favorites. But I also really enjoyed "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"

Tot ce-a scris mai bun Salinger...

Nici un prozator n-a făcut mai puțin pentru gloria de care a avut parte. Unii au publicat zeci de cărți, J.D. Salinger s-a oprit la patru. Ultima lui carte (antumă), tipărită în 1963, conține două povestiri compuse în anii 50. Gloria autorului a fost instantanee și, după 1965, s-a hrănit din speranța tenace a admiratorilor că Salinger scrie, scrie, scrie, chiar dacă a renunțat să mai publice. Joyce Maynard a vorbit de un seif în care s-ar găsi manuscrise destinate unei publicări postume. Însuși Salinger s-a jurat că nu a renunțat niciodată la scris.

Cele nouă povestiri mi-au plăcut dintotdeauna. Tonul lor vine din Cehov, Joyce - Oameni din Dublin - și Hemingway. Naratorul menționează doar gesturile și faptele personajelor. Nu spune niciodată ce gîndesc cu adevărat, nu menționează motivele. După ce discută cu Sybil și înoată pe mare, abulicul Seymour Glass își trage un glonte în cap. Nimic nu prevestește acest deznodămînt:

„Aruncă o privire spre tînăra femeie care dormea întinsă pe unul din cele două paturi alăturate. Se îndreptă apoi spre un geamantan, îl deschise și scoase de sub un maldăr de chiloți și tricouri un revolver de calibru 7, 65. Trase afară magazia de cartușe, o cercetă și apoi o băgă la loc. Ridică piedica pistolului. Se duse apoi și se așeză pe patul neocupat, privi spre soția lui, potrivi pistolul și-și descărcă un glonte în tîmpla dreaptă!”.

Sigur, putem formula ipoteze în legătură cu gestul lui „gratuit”. Seymour Glass tocmai s-a întors din război, acolo s-a petrecut ceva rău, nu aflăm ce, nici naratorul nu știe. Soția, prietenii și rudele îl privesc cu neîncredere, Seymour s-a schimbat în chip vădit, nu mai e omul de odinioară: poate ar fi nevoie de un medic, sugerează mama lui Muriel într-o discuție la telefon.

Nu știu dacă ați remarcat, în povestirle lui J.D. Salinger (publicate între 1948 și 1953), copiii sînt mai inteligenți decît adulții. Conversațiile decurg firesc, descrierile sînt minuțioase, „neobișnuit de precise, complete, intense și persistente”. Să mai spun? Povestirea mea preferată rămîne „Pentru Esmé, cu dragoste și abjecție”...

Hadn't read this one in years and had completely forgotten at least two stories, plus the fact that every tale is in large part about estrangement and fraudulence. Bananafish and the title story are still extraordinary -- and still impossible to fathom in terms of just how they work their magic.

''The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly. However, this is not a tragic situation, in my opinion. The happiest day of my life was many years ago when I was seventeen. I was on my way for lunch to meet my mother, who was going out on the street for the first time after a long illness, and I was feeling ecstatically happy when suddenly, as I was coming in to the Avenue Victor Hugo, which is a street in Paris, I bumped into a chap without any nose. I ask you to please consider that factor, in fact I beg you. It is quite pregnant with meaning.'

Nine Stories = For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories, J.D. Salinger

Nine 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

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.

A slightly mixed bag of stories with some gems among them, notably A Perfect Day for Bananafish and, especially, Teddy. All the stories, even when I didn’t love them, had small moments of either brilliance or craziness. And Salinger was a master of the quirky, zany dialogue full of 50s slang, non sequiturs and sarcastic repartees. There were laugh-out-loud moments, there were bizarre moments where I had no idea what he was on about, there was hyperbole galore, and there was much of the 1940s swagger that I first met (and loved) in The Catcher in the Rye. Once or twice I suspected the narrator was more or less unreliable, and this, too, of course (viz. to some extent Holden) Salinger masters.

A few choice excerpts:

From ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish’:

She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty.

From ‘Just before the War with the Eskimos’:

He was staring down, with his slack mouth ajar, at his injured finger. ‘What?’ he said.

‘How did you cut it?’

‘Goddam if I know’, he said, his inflection implying that the answer to that question was hopelessly obscure. ‘I was lookin’ for something in the goddam wastebasket and it was fulla razor blades.’

‘You Selena’s brother?’ Ginnie asked.

‘Yeah, Christ, I’m bleedin’ to death. Stick around. I may need a goddam transfusion.’

From ‘Teddy’:

Mr. McArdle played leading roles on no fewer than three daytime radio serials when he was in New York, and he had what might be called a third-class leading man’s speaking voice: narcissistically deep and resonant, functionally prepared at a moment’s notice to out-male anyone in the same room with it, if necessary even a small boy.

A comment by precocious Teddy himself (about his parents):

I mean they don’t seem able to love us just the way we are. They don’t seem able to love us unless they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more.

And then of course, there’s the fantastically titled ‘For Esmé – with Love and Squalor’, which has a number of marvelous lexical misunderstandings.

Recommended for people who like Salinger and short stories.

Jerome David Salinger’s collection, Nine Stories, has been mandatory reading in high schools for many years, and as a result has been considered (by most rational human beings) a scourge worse than any seen since the Black Plague of 1347 which resulted in numerous school closures, widespread tardiness, multiple instances of homework submitted that was not produced by the matriculator handing it in, bubonic plague bacteria festering in chewing gum stuck to the bottom of assorted desks, and the deaths of an estimated 75-200 million students (luckily, mostly freshman) across Eurasia.

Coach Freeman blames Nine Stories for his football team losing 52-0 to the crosstown rival Panthers. His All-State quarterback, Chet Simmons choose to stay up to 3 A.M. reading "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" instead of preparing and watching game film. He was sacked 8 times. Ouch.

Monty Poindexter, president of the chess team and owner of 8 years worth of pristine Uncanny X-Men comic books (alphabetized and hermetically sealed in polyethylene bags) laments being so mesmerized by the short story "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor" that he forgot to tell his patient and slightly drunk girlfriend, Tiffany Adams he would not be attending the Spring Fling dance. Consequently, he is still a virgin.

And Jessie Wooderson elected to revisit "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” instead of rocking out to some tasty Van Halen tunage with his best bud, Kevin Pickford who had just scored a half-ounce bag of weed and the keys to his brother’s Trans Am. These two compadres are now taking a break from their 13-year friendship. So sad.

Salinger’s book of riveting tales is more harmful to the average high school student than Tide Pod Challenges, vandalizing lockers with giant spray-painted compositions of erect penises, and eating that oleaginous grey substance served on Thursdays some call sloppy-joes. And the reason for this is that Salinger and his stories reveal that high-minded literature, art in other words, can be accessible to everyone. It can speak to kids in high school and matter to them in comprehensible and approachable ways.
I have not read this book since I was a gawky young man with a greasy forehead and sported a prepossessing mullet that yes, was all business in the front and party in the back( and smelled like freshly blossomed gardenias after a late Spring downpour). All the stories were wonderful and emotional. Yes there is symbolism, repeated themes, and Zen koans that clap louder with one hand than a tree falling over in the forest with nobody around, but these tales-all nine of them—were amazing. Salinger made it all seem so easy. His dialogue, his characters, and his ability to get into the minds of children are striking. These stories are beautiful, serious, and oftentimes very funny.

Simple stories headed nowhere, absolutely no development to speak of. The only one I truly liked was A Perfect Day for Bananafish.

J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories always affects me. Its stories are fleeting and unresolved. Often painfully abrupt. And each story impacts me differently every time I return to this collection. As in his other works, Salinger’s recurrent themes of innocence, alienation, and inner turmoil are here.

In each of these short and impactful stories, J.D. Salinger connects with the fragility of human connection, the weight of trauma, and quiet sadness. His characters are damaged, disillusioned, or desperately seeking meaning. Vulnerable in quiet despair. Salinger writes almost indifferently, but the stories are tender and fully expose the raw ache of being human.

Each story in this collection presents a different kind of pain.

Here are Salinger’s nine stories:

1/ A Perfect Day for Bananafish – Seymour Glass, a war veteran struggling with post-war psychological wounds, shares a moment with a young girl on the beach whilst his own despair consumes him.

2/ Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut – A conversation between two old friends exposes the quiet dissatisfaction and missed opportunities of suburban life.

3/ Just Before the War with the Eskimos – A teenage girl, while dealing with an awkward situation, has a meaningful interaction with a stranger.

4/ The Laughing Man – Young boys who idolize their camp counselor and his fantastic stories become unsettled as the counselor’s own heartbreak begin to taint the tales.

5/ Down at the Dinghy – A mother tries to gently comfort her young son after he overhears a negative conversation about his father.

6/ For Esmé—with Love and Squalor – A soldier, deeply affected by the war, finds hope from a brief encounter he had with a young girl named Esmé.

7/ Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes – A phone call late in the night between two men hints at insecurity, betrayal, and the failure of relationships.

8/ De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period – A young man teaching art envisions a new purpose in his life, but only faces his own loneliness and delusion.

9/ Teddy – A young boy speaks with incredible wisdom about life, death, and the world with calmness.

These stories cut deep. They ache. And they move you.

This collection is timeless. A 5/5.

This is one of "those" books. The ones where I turn the final page and sigh and wonder how I can convince other people that it's worth reading. Consider this: There are 30,520 ratings for this book here on Good Reads. The average of all those ratings is 4.18. Nothing I could say would be more convincing than that. Read it and marvel.

My two favorite stories are For Esme--With Love and Squalor, and Down at the Dinghy. I think I liked these best because I love the way Salinger writes about children. Tender and charming without ever being cutesy. I fell in love with the precocious Esme within the space of a few pages. I wanted a whole book about her!

Down at the Dinghy features a sensitive little boy in self-exile on the family dinghy, and the way his mother gently coaxes him to come back up to the house. This is Salinger's true genius---creating perfect word pictures of ordinary events.

Nine Stories should be required study for every creative writing program. An unpretentious, seemingly effortless, utterly original voice. If I could write just ONE story comparable to these, I'd be so puffed up with pride I'd bust right outta my corset!



NB: The first story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish, can be quite jarring if you're not familiar with the Glass family featured in the novel Franny and Zooey. Seymour is the eldest child of that family, and always referred to in the past tense or at a remove in Salinger's other works. This is your one chance to see him while he's still alive. His sweet, gentle nuttiness with the little girl on the beach is especially touching.

نه آقای سلینجر,نه
فقط داستان کوتاه اولش جذاب بود(نظر شخصی)اما به لحاظ ترجمه و ویراست هیچ‌ کم و کاستی نداره

Bir süredir kitap seçimlerimden yana oldukça şanslı olduğumu hissediyorum. Ama yine de itiraf etmek gerekirse, uzun bir süredir beni bu kadar etkileyen, çiviyle yerime çakan öyküler okumamıştım.

Yıllardır rafta okunmayı bekleyen kitaplardan biriydi Salinger’ın Dokuz Öyküsü. İyi ki beklemiş. Benim gibi öykü delisi biri için, bazı öykülerin, bazı atmosferlerin doğru zamanı var gibi geliyor hep. Mesela 10 yıl önce okumuş olsam araya gidebilecek bir kitaptı benim için bu, o nedenle tam da şu günlerde okumuş olmaktan çok memnunum.

Ayrıntılarda boğulabileceği, kolaylıkla ajite edebileceği her konuyu ve sahneyi öyle güzel göğüslemiş ki hayran olmamak elde değil. Öykülerin içine yerleştirdiği önemsiz gözüken ufacık bir anın, göz kırpan bir ayrıntının, dönüp dolaşıp muhteşem sona hizmet edecek sağlam birer yapı taşına dönüşmesi, okuyucu olarak tam bir doyum sağladı bende. Her öykünün bitiminde aradığımı hem verdi hem de peşinden koşturttu Salinger. Yaşadığımı hissettirdi kısaca.

Dokuz öykünün hemen hepsinde, çocuk ve yetişkin perspektifi var. Karşılıklı diyaloglar gerçekçi ve o kadar vurucu ki hafızaya kazınıyor. Çocukların olduğu her yerde kendiliğinden ortaya çıkan “saflık” ve savaşın olduğu her yerde yine kendiliğinden kaçınılmaz olarak meydana gelen “yıkım, huzursuzluk, kirlenme” sırt sırta ilerliyor öykülerde. Bu kontrast kurguyu dipdiri tutuyor. Öykülerin bel kemiğini güçlendiriyor.

Ve en güzeli de, hemen hemen 9 öykünün hepsinde de unutulmayacak karakterler yaratmış Salinger. Ben artık aradan yıllar da geçse, yüzlerce kitap da okusam, binlerce kahramanla da tanışsam Esme, Seymour, Teddy, Eloise, De-Daumier Smith ve Ginnie’yi unutamam mesela, bundan eminim.

İyi metin okumak isteyenlere kesinlikle tavsiye edeceğim bir kitap Salinger’dan Dokuz Öykü.

10/10