An overwhelming sense that something, somewhere, had gone horribly wrong. Sure, there was warmth there too, but mainly there was depression and frustration. “Loving” wasn’t the first thing that struck me about these stories.
It’s a fine, warm appreciation but I do question Welty’s sign-off: “Best of all, he has a loving heart.” He pronounces no judgments, he is simply gifted with having them, and with having them passionately.” There is not a trace of sentimentality about his work, although it is full of children that are bound to be adored. “He has the equipment of a born writer to begin with – his sensitive eye, his incredibly good ear, and something I can think of no word for but grace. She didn’t mess around, coming straight in with: “JD Salinger’s writing is original, first rate, serious and beautiful.” There follows a hymn of praise: Since I quoted a lot of biting criticism of Salinger last week, I’m glad to redress the balance and turn to Eudora Welty’s 1953 New York Times review for Nine Stories.
It’s also easy to draw parallels between bananafish who eat so much they get stuck in holes and Lane, the hopeless boyfriend in Franny, and his gorging on frog’s legs.īut there’s another good reason to start with the Nine Stories: they’re superb. Indeed, it seems so intimately bound up in the narrative of both Franny and Zooey that it astonished me to learn that it was originally published in the New Yorker (in 1948) nearly 10 years before Zooey came along (in 1957).Įlsewhere, tiny details like the chicken sandwich that Franny doesn’t manage to eat, or the ignored chicken broth in Zooey, take on new symbolic meaning once you’ve read stories like Just Before War With the Eskimos, where another unwanted chicken sandwich becomes an emblem of miscommunication and despair. The astonishing A Perfect Day for Bananafish, and the insight it gives into the character and demise of Seymour Glass throws everything that follows into stark relief. Looking at the books as a series (as Salinger clearly did), it makes sense to start with the earlier Glass stories. Franny, with its tight, tense narrative and satisfying resolution wouldn’t feel out of place alongside other Salinger stories like A Perfect Day for Bananafish and Just Before the War With the Eskimos. I’d be loth to let Zooey go, but I understand Deadgod’s logic. “I think the two pieces are put together poorly because, partly, of their unlike texture: Franny, to me, is coherent and tight – each piece following from and leading into the ones before and after … Zooey is the self-indulgently unrealistic thing many have complained of.”ĭeadgod also put forward the intriguing idea of quietly putting Zooey “on an open source footing” and adding Franny to the collection known in the US as Nine Stories (it’s For Esme With Love and Squalor in the UK), and making a new book: Ten Stories.
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