একটা বই পড়তে গিয়ে ইমোশনগুলো এত রোলার কোস্টারে চড়ে, কিছু কিছু ভালো লাগা, না লাগা - এমনকি শেষটাতে বইটাতে ৫তারা দিয়ে আমি নিজেই অবাক হয়ে গিয়েছি।

৯টা গল্প সবমিলিয়ে কেমন?

কিছু গল্প আজিমপুর থেকে নীলক্ষেতে যাবার পথে সন্ধ্যার পর যে একটা দীর্ঘায়িত ট্র্যাফিক জ্যাম পড়ে, সেই জ্যামে বসে চিবানো পপকর্ন এর মত নিরর্থক কিন্তু প্রয়োজনীয়। আবার কিছু গল্প বছরের এই দীর্ঘায়িত দিনগুলোতে অফিস থেকে আগে আগে ফিরে বিকেল-ঘুম দেবার মতই আকাঙ্ক্ষিত। কিছু গল্প কোন কাজ করতে ভালো না লাগা মন নিয়ে দেওয়ালের দিকে মুখ ফিরিয়ে আলস্যে শুয়ে থাকবার মতন। আবার কিছু গল্পাংশ ভর দুপুরে বাসে জানলার পাশের সিটে বসে কড়া রোদের তাপে পুড়বার তিতবিরক্তির মতন। আবার কিছু মাঝরাতে মিথ্যা ক্ষুধায় অকারণ চীনাবাদাম চিবানোর বিলাসিতা করবার মতন।

Reading this short story collection helps me to understand why Salinger was hounded to the ends of the earth in an effort to make him write again. His characters are so poignant and so real; his children so precocious and on the brink of something wholly indefinable.

I bought the book with a desire to revisit For Esme - With Love And Squalor and found it as captivating and moving as I had remembered, but the unexpected treasures of The Laughing Man and Teddy left me breathless. Salinger knows complete sorry, desperation and irony when he finds it. As we peep into the world of his characters, who smoke their endless cigarettes, carry on their conversations of double meaning, and attempt to connect with others, we cannot help nodding in recognition of the knowledge that this is a microcosm of the human condition.

Antes que novelista, Salinger fue un cuentista y de todos aquellos que escribió solamente permitió que nueve de ellos pudieran ser publicados mediante esta breve antología condenando a gran parte de su obra a quedar en el olvido. De estas nueve historias en tres de ellas podemos conocemos más sobre los hermanos Glass.

Como en la mayoría de su obra, su encanto se centra en el estilo de Salinger en captar la esencia del lenguaje hablado a través de sus diálogos y monólogos versátiles y dinámicos. También la niñez y adolescencia siguen siendo el vehículo para adentrarnos en su filosofía sobre el descontento y la búsqueda espiritual y simbolizando lo aún no corrompido, una catársis (supongo yo) necesaria debido a lo vivido al contexto postguerra vivido por Salinger.

Hay algunas historias que pudiéramos no haber leído (aunque al hacerlo nos hicieron pasar un buen momento) y todo seguiría igual y luego están otros, donde lo bello y lo trágico se quedarán un tiempo con nosotros. Personalmente, mis favoritos han sido “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, “The Laughing Man”, “Down at the Dingy” y “Teddy”.

Nove Histórias...
Nove obras de arte...
Nem sempre de fácil entendimento, obrigando a pensar e a reler e a pensar...

"Vorrei proprio sapere perché mai la gente dia tanta importanza alle emozioni"

Ho sempre pensato di essere una lettrice da romanzo. Il tempo narrativo del racconto è troppo breve, pensavo. Non ho il tempo fisico di affezionarmi, di stazionare, di fare un viaggio sufficientemente lungo e 'immersivo' coi personaggi di una storia breve. Insomma non mi è proprio dato il tempo sufficiente per fare amicizia con loro. Sostenevo.

Di nuovo Anobii. Giudizi stellari per i nove racconti. Nove è uno dei miei numeri preferiti (9=3^2... a ciascuno le sue fissazioni), non è una raccolta lunga, Il giovane Holden mi era piaciuto moltissimo. Quindi mi son lanciata.

E ora son qui che mi chiedo come commentare una tale raccolta. Sì perché ciascuna storia ivi contenuta sarebbe degna di essere citata o ricordata.
Ogni racconto un modello.

I temi presenti. Lo sguardo lucido, asciutto...chirurgico dei bambini. Le loro osservazioni acute mai banali. Il coraggio e l'ostinata difesa di coloro che amano. Il piglio sicuro e la mancanza di indecisione. E per contro un mondo costituito da adulti soli, smarriti, distrutti spesso dalla guerra o dalle proprie nevrosi, da relazioni vuote, deludenti e fallimentari.
I dialoghi. Talmente incisivi e definiti da essere reali.
Ma credo che l'aggettivo più appropriato per definire questi racconti sia proprio folgorante. (Quanta quota parte in questo caso va riconosciuta alla traduzione di Fruttero?)

E incantata dalla radiosità di "sorrisi brevissimi, ristretti", ammaliata da "ragazze sconvolgenti e definitive", agghiacciata dalle conversazioni notturne di uomini con capelli grigi, intenerita dalla "comicità intollerabile" di un simpaticissimo bimbetto quatrenne, divertiti dall'arguzia di una tredicenne "estremamente comunicativa per la sua età", basita dalle affermazioni profetiche di un bimbo decenne sull'ottusità dell'approccio logico e intellettuale (da mangiamela) degli adulti, straziata da bimbe miopissime il cui unico affetto è costituito da amici immaginari per far spazio ai quali dormono sul bordo del letto, esilarata dalle lettere impertinenti a suore pittrici da parte di improbabili insegnanti d'arte, ho sofferto, ho riso, mi son stupita ma soprattutto mi son emozionata (ahimè... io son tra quella gente che alle emozioni che dà molta importanza alle emozioni)

Che dire d'altro se non che Esmè, ragazzina amante di storie squallide, e suo fratellino Charles rimarranno per sempre nel mio cuore. E a proposito... "Cosa dice un muro ad un altro muro? "...

This collection of stories sent me back. I read them long ago and half expected to be "sent back" by memory cells saying, "Oh, yeah. I recall this one," but, no. Not a one. Past the sleepy town of Vague, even.

What sent me back was time and place. Can't say if it's ME when I read them (at so young an age) or the stories, which struck me as being paradoxically quaint yet sophisticated at the same time. I made an update saying it reminded me of black and white film. All those dates from the 50s. My earliest recollections are the early 60s, but that's close enough. The Zapruder film and other footage of JFK's Dallas visit looks like another planet. All those hats and librarian-like cat glasses. Thin ties. Thin people (processed food and sugar still hadn't caught up with us).

Even the later 60s bother me. The grainy color footage of people waving goodbye to the train carrying RFK. My God. How Salinger gets mixed up in all THIS is beyond me.

The stories, though. Dialogue is Salinger's métier (which I think is French for "favorite way to show off"). His characters talk, therefore they are. And they say things like wudja and whatcha and things like that. And, as I noted in his other book, Salinger italicizes to prove the mettle of his ear. "What do you expect?"

Sometimes, instead of describing an action, Salinger will have his characters react to the action, leaving it to the reader to infer. Often he'll populate the stories with children, some bratty (advisable) and some precocious (less so). Only Teddy in the last story grates a bit. And the interactions between adults and children in the first and last story seem naive by today's "stranger danger" standards. That's a bit of lost innocence, too, given that the adults in these stories have only good intentions.

Coolest of all is how J.D. is at ease with most any kind of protagonist -- male, female, little girl, little boy. He can do the flashback. He can do chronology. He can get philosophical in a Buddhist kind of way. He can use the news (such as wartime stories), he can be funny, and he can be shocking (first story, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" being a perfect day for examples).

So maybe I was ready. In the right mood to revisit this particular book. Maybe, in its meditative way, it took me back to simpler times -- even though both Salinger and I know those times were no more simple than our own tortured times.

Whatever. Glad I impulse-picked it up. The itch met its scratch.

Until next time, Nine Stories. Maybe in 2051, if you're not doing anything and I'm not on my Teddy-like 53rd reincarnation.

Absolutely stunning! Salinger adroitly juxtaposes the tragic and the comic in these brilliant stories. The concluding sentence of every story made my hair stand on end, with its unprecedented inversion and ironic subtlety.

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!

Over the past year or so, I have re-read (50 years apart) all four of Salinger's most famous published works. This is my most recent. It consists of nine brilliant stories, the most famous of which are "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme--with Love and Squalor." They are wonderful, but I must say that my favorites are "DeDaumier-Smith's Blue Period" and "The Laughing Man", both of which are unforgettable. J. D. Salinger is one of the great American writers of the 20th century and his books have impressed and moved both a teenager and a senior citizen.

ناطور دشت رو اوایل جوانی خوندم و اون موقع همون طور که انتظار می رفت ارتباط بالایی باهاَش گرفتم. بعدش بیشتر کتابای سلینجر رو خریدم تا سر وقت بخونم. الان اما وقتی رفتم سراغش می بینم که فضای داستانای سلینجر با اون رمان از ی جهاتی خیلی متفاوته.
بیشتر از همه باید با رویکرد روان شناختی بهشون نگاه کرد. تمام داستان هاش به غیر از سطح اولیه و ساده لایه ی دیگه در عمق دارن. شما باید شناسایی کنین که هر شخصیتی یا هر چیزی دقیقا نماد چه چیز دیگه ایه و به چی دلالت می کنه. این ارتباط گیری با داستان ها رو کمی سخت می کنه. البته اگه بخواین فقط به لایه ی سطحی نگاه کنین ممکنه بگین داستان ها قوی نیستن یا خوشتون نمیاد اما داستان ها خیلی خوبن به شرطی که چیزی که توشون بیان می شه، توسط مخاطب درک بشه. تنوع زاویه ی دید و موضوع داستان ها و حتی قالب نگارششون باعث می شه که هم قدرت قلم نویسنده به چشم بیاد و هم با لذت بیشتری ادامه بدین. از بین تمام داستان ها مرد خندان و تدی هم جذابتر و هم خاص تر بودن. من از این دو بیشتر خوشم اومد.

درضمن اون چیزی که به نظر میاد در اکثریت داستان ها حضورش حس می شه، گذشته، ناخودآگاه و چیزهایی شکل گرفته بر اثر جلوه ای از واقعیت در ذهنه.

Salinger is great isn't he? Ever since my initial reading and love affair with "Catcher" three summers ago I've been meaning to read more of his work. I liked this collection of nine stories. My favourites? A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Down at the Dinghy, For Esmé - With Love and Squalor, De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period, and, of course, Teddy. The others were good but just... forgettable. If you enjoyed Catcher then read this!

نمدونم ترجمه یه نارسایی‌هایی داشت واقعاً یا نه، ولی ویرایشش یه‌‌کم اعصابمو خرد می‌کرد. کتابی که اینقد تجدید چاپ شده اونم. سلینجر اونم. داستان‌کوتاهاش اونم. سلینجر برا من یه جورایی مث دوا شده. هرازگاهی باید یه چیزی ازش بخونم که دوباره ریکاوری بشم. چندتا از داستان‌های این مجموعه رو قبلاً هم خونده بودم(مثل یک روز خوش برای موز ماهی و دهانم فلان و چشمانم چنان :همر: خدایی چه مناسبتی داشت این اسم من نفهمیدم!) و کلاً دوست داشتم. بازم اینو خواهم خوند. ولی نه اینطور پشت سر هم. هر داستانو دیگه می‌کشه می‌رم می‌خونم. مثلاً تدی رو می‌دونم دیری نمی‌گذره که می‌رم باز می‌خونم. عجب فضایی داشت.