Nunca había leído nada de J.D. Salinger, es por ello que decidí comprarme este libro de cuentos, que es uno de sus tres títulos principales, junto con el aclamado “El Guardián entre el Centeno” y “Franny and Zooey”.
Respecto del primer libro debo decir que luego de leer brevemente de qué se trataba la historia desistí de leerlo al instante, puesto que no me atrae en absoluto leer la vida de un adolescente inconformista (aunque este comentario moleste a algunos lectores y me traiga inconvenientes). Mucho menos intentaré leer la otra novela de la que deduzco se trata de temas similares.
Leer "Nueve Cuentos" no me deparó gran entusiasmo tampoco. Tal vez, mi idea o concepción de cuentos se asemeja más a otros estilos narrativos como por ejemplo el que propugnaba Edgar Allan Poe, creador del cuento moderno cuando afirmaba que un cuento debía causar un “efecto” en el lector, para que este quedara atrapado hasta el final.
He notado también que tal vez algunos novelistas no parecen dominar el terreno de cuentos como otros. No es lo mismo leer este tipo de cuentos que uno de García Márquez, Julio Cortázar, Ray Bradbury o Guy de Maupassant.
Ni que hablar de Edgar Allan Poe a quien nombrara anteriormente o de los cuentos de los grandes novelistas rusos como Dostoievski, Gógol o Tolstoi.
Todos estos autores agreguen en sus cuentos características digámosle efectistas que funcionan como hilo argumental de principio a fin y eso hace que me sienta muy a gusto al leerlos.
Nada de eso me pasó con los cuentos de Salinger. Los historias relatadas en ellos se iban de la misma forma que habían llegado. Era tal mi aburrimiento que lleva a expresarlo en la página 274, luego de haber leído siete de los nueve que integran este volumen. Narraciones para mi gusto sin dirección aparente, largos diálogos intrascendentes o situaciones totalmente superfluas me llevaban a agradecer que el libro tuviera sólo 286 páginas.
Son pocos los cuentos que me atrajeron. A decir verdad sólo uno, aunque hay dos que sí están bien construidos argumentalmente (según mi humilde punto de vista de lector).
El cuento que más me gustó fue “Un día perfecto para el pez plátano” y qué casualidad: me encantó casualmente por su final tan sorprendente.
Los otros dos cuentos que me gustaron un poco más que el resto fueron, en primer lugar, “Teddy”, por las características místico-filosóficas de su personaje principal y que encierra toda una concepción existencial del autor y “Para Esmé, con amor y sordidez”, por la forma en que el narrador, un agente del servicio secreto norteamericano en Inglaterra entabla una cariñosa relación con Esmé y su pequeño hermano Charles, acerca de lo que surge de esa charla en el bar y de los que le sucede a ese soldado tiempo después.
Noté también que muchos cuentos están ambientados o durante la segunda guerra mundial o en épocas de posguerra y lo que esto generó en algunos personajes de los cuentos.
Mención final para el cuento “El período azul de Daumier-Smith”. Un cuento escrito con ironía y en forma amena acerca de un joven pintor de diecinueve años que se hace pasar por un Maestro de la pintura, muchos años mayor, amigo de Picasso y que intenta hacerse pasar por profesor en una academia de arte dirigida por un peculiar señor japonés.
Y nada más. El resto de los cuentos me pareció completamente intrascendentes. Simples relatos dirigidos a ninguna parte.
No voy a discutir que Salinger es considerado uno de los padres de la narrativa contemporánea; eso está muy claro y yo soy un simple (o triste) lector cuya impresión ante la lectura de sus cuentos no contribuye a nada pero bueno, a mí en particular leer sus cuentos me produjo una sensación de aburrimiento y desinterés que sólo el pez plátano pudo salvar.
Sin ofensas Sr. Salinger. No es nada personal, pero debo reconocer que este libro irá a reposar al estante de mi biblioteca por mucho, mucho tiempo.

I am rereading Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger, titled by an English publisher For Esme: With Love and Squalor, reviewing my favorites separately along the way. “Esme” is one of those stories. The collection focuses on how the US was doing post WWII. Salinger was a veteran, having fought at the Battle of the Bulge and other famous battles. He also worked in counter-intelligence as well. When he was at the Battle of the Bulge he was carrying six chapters of the Catcher in the Rye, and he also wrote as many as twenty short stories during the war.

I have already reviewed "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" separately from the collection. See links below. "Esme" is also one of my three favorites of the collection.

“Esme” is one of his most intimate and seemingly personal stories in Nine Stories. It features a Sergeant X that bears a close resemblance to Salinger and his war experience, and a little girl named Esme (see also the little girl in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and Catcher). Esme only talks to him for about a half hour but sets up a writing correspondence with X; she asks him to write a book with “squalor” in it, and in the story (see title) he obliges, as in the second half of the story X is hospitalized with “battle fatigue,” or PTSD, or a nervous breakdown, all labels for a condition experienced by millions of soldiers traumatized by combat.

Salinger suffered from PTSD and it may have affected him the rest of his life as he within several years dropped out of society and became a recluse. Salinger thought the escapist and almost exclusively celebratory post-war America failed to acknowledge the horrors of war. The story was intended as an act of healing for his fellow vets.

Salinger hated the cover of the story collection named by his British publisher as Esme, not Nine Stories, and Salinger detested the cover that featured what he saw as a “dishy” blonde. Esme for him represented the innocence of childhood that for many had been destroyed by the war for veterans. I find it very moving, not without humor or sweetness.

In 1963 a film version was in the works; Salinger insisted the part of Esme be played by New Yorker humorist writer Peter DeVries's daughter Jan, but it never worked out.

In 1963, film and TV director Peter Tewksbury approached Salinger about making a film version of the story. Salinger agreed, on condition that he himself cast the role of Esmé. He had in mind for the role Jan de Vries, the young daughter of his friend, the writer Peter de Vries (and yes, I am well aware of Salinger's interest in younger women, including Joyce Maynard, who lived with him when she was eighteen--I read that book and liked it, but my view is that the stories in this collection and in Catcher--Holden's sister--feature young girls as somewhat idealized symbols of childhood goodness).

“I Fought in a War” by Belle & Sebastian, inspired by this story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKRDa...

Briefly, on a couple of the other stories:

"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" is a story about two girls who just played tennis. They go to prep school together. Ginnie, goes to Selena's house, asking for money she is owed, and talks to two guys there who change her mind make her more empathetic.

"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"--See all the light and whimsical titles? There is a kind of quirky humor in the stories, ala James Thurber, Peter DeVries, Tom Robbins, Richard Brautigan, but the difference with Salinger is a layer of melancholy/dysfunction in part connected to the war and the conditions of naive postwar America. "Pretty Mouth" is basically a conversation between a guy and his drunken friend that reminds me of Raymond Carver and John Cheever, a fifties eversion of endless booze stories.

"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is mostly a romp, with lots of jokes, where Seymour teaches art through a correspondence school. This reminds me of Peter DeVries.

"Teddy" is about Seymour's little brother Teddy on a cruise. Teddy is ten, seen as brilliant, Buddhist, infused with some of Salinger's own exploration of western vs. eastern notions of spirituality.

My review of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" can be found here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

My review of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" can be found here:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I love this book so much that it soared into one of my top reads ever. Salinger is such a genius. I particularly loved bananafish, esme, and teddy, but all the short stories were so filled with symbolism and perspective. Going to be hard to find a book to top this for the rest of the year.

سلینجر عزیز! تا قبل از دیدن فیلم «یاغی در دشت» نمی‌دانستم که شما هم مثل خودم یک دیوانۀ درجه یک بوده‌اید. از طرفی عاشق واکنش شما به عکاس در آن عکس معروف سال 1988 هستم و هراس و خشم چشم‌هایتان در آن عکس را می‌شناسم. حالا بهتر عمق داستان‌هایتان را درک می‌کنم و می‌دانم که چرا آدم‌های این نُه داستان شبیه رمان‌های چند جلدی‌ای هستند که جلد اول یا آخرشان گم شده. همینطور، درک می‌کنم که چرا تا آخر عمر دورتان دیوار کشیدید. من بالاخره با شما آشتی کردم
تقدیم به جروم با عشق و نکبت

Alright, well. That was umm... I don't know what that was.

I needed to read a non-Goodreads friend recommended book for a challenge, and this is what I got saddled with. I've never read any Salinger, and honestly, this doesn't have me rushing out to change that fact.

Thankfully, it was short. I started it at the dentist today, thinking that short stories would be suited better to the name-called-then-sit-and-wait, rinse, repeat style of office visits. And it was, because I sure as hell didn't mind being interrupted from these stories.

I have no effing idea what these were supposed to be about. Was there a point? It seemed like most of these were just random bizarre and warped vignettes about well-to-do people standing around like...



Oh wait, there was actually one story in this collection that I almost halfway liked. Because it was the closest to actually BEING a story. With like, a beginning, middle and end... sort of. Not that it was good (it wasn't), or that I identified with the characters (I didn't and pretty much actively disliked all three of them), or even had a point other than the one above (FWP, yo!), but at least I pretty much knew what was happening in it.

Probably I just don't get it. That's OK. Not getting it was painful enough to only try once.

Sayanara, Salinger. May any pity attempts I give your books in the future at least be readable. And coherent.

La vita è un caval donato

Non starò a ripetere il solito mea culpa sulla narrativa breve, trascurata e subordinata ai romanzi, ritenuti a lungo non solo la migliore ma l’esclusiva forma letteraria degna di nota.

Poi mi sono imbattuto in Wallace e Carver, Saunders e la Munro ed altri ancora e le eccezioni sono diventate regola, ma ciò non mi ha impedito di stupirmi di fronte a questa ennesima dimostrazione, firmata J.D.Salinger, della sottile malìa del racconto e delle sue pressoché infinite potenzialità allusive.

Nel merito, cosa posso dire di questa eccellente raccolta, tanto scarna nel titolo quanto ricca nelle nove direzioni in cui l’arte del narrare si spinge, una raccolta della quale tutto è stato già analizzato? Mi limito a citare i due aspetti che hanno maggiormente colpito la mia attenzione.

Il primo è la grande pregnanza dei dialoghi: quasi tutti i racconti sono costruiti con una precisione chirurgica improntata soprattutto all’arte del dialogo; da qualche parte ho sentito usare per questi racconti l’aggettivo “radiofonici” e penso che la definizione sia calzante perché sembrano davvero costruiti per essere recitati in dialogo, una voce a fare da contrappunto all’altra con uno straordinario effetto musicale, talora dissonante ma sempre teso ad un significato superiore che, a sorpresa, si coglie (o così sembra) via via che il racconto procede o addirittura alla fine, in una visione retrospettiva che induce alla rilettura.

Il secondo elemento, che pur a distanza di decenni mi riporta alla fulminante e decisiva lettura di “Il giovane Holden” (sì, sono uno di quelli…), è la capacità di dare voce, carattere, personalità ai bambini, cosa tutt’altro che facile e scontata se si pensa quante volte abbiamo incontrato nei romanzi o nei film bambini petulanti, improbabili, sdolcinati, in una parola insopportabili!

Qui invece la voce dei bambini è resa con delicata appropriatezza, lasciando sì uno stridore insito nell’età acerba della vocina ma sublimandone l’effetto con una grande delicatezza, sorprendente se si pensa al leggendario caratteraccio dell’autore…

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.

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.

A PERFECT DAY FOR BANANAFISH - 5 stars. sometimes, i think i'm being overdramatic when i say that J.D Salinger was perfect, perfect, perfect. but then i reread this collection and i'm like, nevermind, i was right. he Gets It.

UNCLE WIGGILY IN CONNECTICUT - 3.5 stars. Eloise and Mary Jane drinking themselves into a stupor and weeping and pining after companions that are no longer with them/don't exist feels a little bit too relatable right now...

JUST BEFORE THE WAR WITH THE ESKIMOS - 3.5 stars. i still want more from this.

THE LAUGHING MAN - 4 stars. *shudders*

DOWN AT THE DINGHY - 3.5 stars. Booboo used to be my favourite Glass family member. i think this story is the most underwhelming for me though.

FOR ESMÉ - WITH LOVE AND SQUALOR - 5 stars. it's just SO funny to me that i STILL read this story while picturing ASOUE Esmé Squalor as Salinger's Esmé in my mind...i'm so sorry Salinger, but i knew Lemony Snicket first since i was like.....well, 8 years old. anyways, this story is still so goddamn good.

PRETTY MOUTH AND GREEN MY EYES - 5 stars. i read this story and the quote, "I don't love her anymore, either. I don't know. I do and I don't. It varies. It fluctuates," first at age 14 and i've literally never known peace since.

DE DAUMIER-SMITH'S BLUE PERIOD - 4 stars. i love art, i love agony, and i love this story.

TEDDY - 5 stars. aaaaaaaand we finish on my absolute favourite story from the bunch (and just in general). noBODY knows how to write manic depressive, neglected youths better than Salinger. this story still haunts me.

i can't really say anything that is coherent or concrete because J.D. Salinger is one of my die-for-all-time-favourites so obviously i am biased. however, in my opinion, these stories should be read by everyone at least once because they are beautifully written, dark, funny at times, and just perfect, perfect, perfect. can the Salinger estate release the rest of his secret stories now? please? i am Begging...

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.

The most difficult genre is the short story. There is no 100-page warm-up. There is no carefully planting seeds that will take shape 75 pages later.

And it is almost an impossible task to stir up the soul while being limited to so few words and an even more daunting task if the author isn’t going to resort to cheap tricks for sympathy but rather earning those tears and emotions.

Salinger certainly delivers. And these stores are distinctly Salinger from the use of italics to the abundant use of dialogue to the sea of memorable quotes even before the age of Twitter and Instagram. These stories almost pulse with a backstory, begging to be told, leaving the reader always desperately hungry for more. And the whisper of F. Scott Fitzgerald can be heard faintly if you lean into this work. For example, in For Esme – With Love and Squalor, Esme says, “I’m quite communicative for my age.” ‘Communicative’ isn’t a word that naturally rolls off the tongue. Yet, it is vaguely familiar, because this word appears in the third sentence of The Great Gatsby, “He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way…”.

Additionally, as part of the study The American Novel Since 1945, we read Salinger’s Franny and Zooey who are part of The Glass Family. Nine Stories includes more adventures with The Glass Family, going into greater depth with siblings Seymour, Boo Boo, and Walt.

Although the two most famous stories are A Perfect Day for Bananafish and For Esme – With Love and Squalor, my two favorite stories are the last two – De-Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period and Teddy.

De-Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period is about a young man who becomes an art instructor at a correspondence art school. The vibes. The ambiance. It is laugh-out-loud funny. There is also mention of a dummy, and I wonder if this was the creative seed that planted the dummy in A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

Teddy appears to be a precursor to Franny and Zooey as there are parallels between the two works, for example, the use of confined spaces and discussion of meditation, emptying the mind, and education. Page 297, “It’s time for him to take everything out of his head instead of putting more stuff in,” parallels page 65 of Franny and Zooey, “…education by any name would smell as sweet, and maybe much sweeter if it didn’t begin with a quest for knowledge at all but with a quest, as Zen would put it, for no-knowledge.”

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $89.40 for a 2010 Boxed Set of Hardcover Salinger Books on Mercari

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Três revisitações aos «imortais» Glass com a sequência do termo de Seymour pairando, uma vez mais, sobre toda a família.

O hermetismo tragicómico da escrita de Salinger é patente neste formato do conto, sendo os diálogos o expoente máximo da mestria desta forma de expressão enxuta e perturbante, que marca indelevelmente o leitor.

(Era o último Salinger que tinha por ler. Vou só ali ganir orfandade literária em posição fetal.)