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Nine Stories

4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 · rating details · 69,780 ratings · 2,044 reviews

The 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)
"Teddy" (1953)

Paperback, 302 pages

Published January 30th 2001 by Back Bay Books (first published May 1953)

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Oct 08, 2009 brian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to brian by: david

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.

a...more

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Feb 26, 2009 David rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 im...more 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.

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Dec 30, 2010 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories-are-your-friends

If kidnappers had snatched up J D Salinger some time in the early 1970s, driven like madmen through the night and the next day too and imprisoned him in a small but pleasant room somewhere near Boise, furnished him with with all mod cons, and told him he wasn't going anyplace soon until he'd finished at the very least another nine stories, and at best three or four complete novels; and if the kidnappers - due to an endearing cocktail of naivete and compassion (because you know they were just lit...more If kidnappers had snatched up J D Salinger some time in the early 1970s, driven like madmen through the night and the next day too and imprisoned him in a small but pleasant room somewhere near Boise, furnished him with with all mod cons, and told him he wasn't going anyplace soon until he'd finished at the very least another nine stories, and at best three or four complete novels; and if the kidnappers - due to an endearing cocktail of naivete and compassion (because you know they were just literature fans like you and me, not blank-eyed killers, and they weren't entirely convinced about this whole caper to begin with let it be said) let JD go for long walks (to get inspiration, but really to beat on a nearby farmhouse door and call the cops); and if they were then rounded up (not too hard, said the cops) and put on trial - not a jury in the land would have convicted them.
When the prosecution rested and the defence opened, their lawyer would simply have issued a copy of Nine Stories to all 12 jurors and said "Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case."

This is not to say that each of the Nine is such a great golden glowing nugget of controlled power, insight and wisdom (some are) but that the whole is such eloquent proof of the perspicacity, intelligence and all-round humanbeingness of JDS that reading this collection is very bittersweet - how lovely it all is, and how very little of it there is, when duller, pudgier-fingered writers type on, and on, and publish, and publish.
Anyone who has encountered comments by myself on Ye Olde Catcher in Ye Rye will now accuse me of inconsistency, or at least, be expecting me to accuse JDS of the same. How can I hate the novel for its unbearable whine and Johnny-one-note somebody-shut-him-up-please tiresomeness and yet enjoy all the rest of JDS as I do? They're cut from the same cloth, it's not like Picasso's blue period and Picasso the cubist which could have been different guys, or the Velvet Underground's first and third albums which could have been a different band. But I've come across this in different areas of the universe - can't stand Tom Waits until Swordfishtrombones, think he's a genius for three albums, then can't stand him again. Shakespeare's tragedies - oui! Shakespeare's comedies - er, non! So maybe not that unusual.

JDS famously published all his stuff between 1951 and 1963 and then STOPPED. (Which is why the kidnappers pounced, they gave him a good ten year rest and that was ENOUGH to their way of thinking.) And he stopped just as things were getting really interesting. He writes of the murderous conformities of American educated middle-class life and of the outcasts and especially young kids who either subvert this button-down world or bail out swiftly. Just as he stopped publishing things began to change. the 60s began swinging, and the youthquake (as it has been termed) was upon us. Just the very stuff that you might have thought would have fascinated JD. What do the kids do when they try to make their own rules up? I feel the absence of JDS throughout the 60s and 70s, as i feel the absence of another American writer who STOPPED in 1963, Sylvia Plath. I want to know what these two clever clogs would have made of the tumultuous ten years which followed the self-stilling of their voices.

But back to the Nine Stories - and to steal a fellow reviewer's catch-phrase:

Is it a classic?

Answer : Yes. Goddamn!

PS : I realise I also speculated upon the advisability of kidnapping Thomas Bernhard elsewhere but that was to save the world from any further novels like Extinction, whereas the JD Salinger kidnap is for the opposite reason. But I would like to publicly state that I do not condone the imprisonment of any writers for any reasons, so please don't try this at home.

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Apr 14, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: Kenneth Agee

Shelves: 20th-century, short-stories, children, cynicism

The writing is elegant. I never realized that there are so many graceful ways to describe the way a person dangles a cigarette, flicks an ash, tosses back a cocktail, or lobs an insult like a grenade. Salinger reveals the story indirectly through dialogue. In my opinion, “the rule” that good writers show but never tell is mere cant-–but I recognize Salinger’s talent for "showing" is of the highest order. I also appreciate his originality because I had no idea where any of these stories was going...more

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Mar 12, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Rocky Dennis in Heaven

Recommended to Mariel by: the girl from back then

It has been a long time since I read Nine Stories. For once I don't care about getting older. This wasn't about that. So I started rereading Nine Stories in my car on my work lunch breaks. Getting through the day necessities stuff. I really needed an old friend. I was at a loss in a bad depths of despair kinda way that I cannot put in a meaningful way that will mean shit to anyone else. I remembered Nine Stories was good to me. I'm in no mood for anything more than that. Friends.

This probably wo...more

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Mar 06, 2007 Rolls rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of rainy days, Belle and Sebastian and Wes Anderson

Salinger's "Nine Stories" should be renamed "How to Write Short Stories." While many hold up "Catcher in the Rye" as the zenith of his achievements for me it will always be this wistful and brave little book. I re-read it two or three times or year. I love it that much.

To be honest out of the nine stories collected here I would say that only a third are Salinger's best. "Perfect Day for Banafish," "For Esme - With Love and Squalor," and "The Laughing Man" are to me the peaks of short fiction. E...more Salinger's "Nine Stories" should be renamed "How to Write Short Stories." While many hold up "Catcher in the Rye" as the zenith of his achievements for me it will always be this wistful and brave little book. I re-read it two or three times or year. I love it that much.

To be honest out of the nine stories collected here I would say that only a third are Salinger's best. "Perfect Day for Banafish," "For Esme - With Love and Squalor," and "The Laughing Man" are to me the peaks of short fiction. Everything that Salinger does best he does in these three tales. Nobody wrote children better than him. They leap off the page at you right into your lap. Esme, her brother, Seymour's little friend and the narrator of "Laughing Man" are so vivid and real you feel like running them all down the street for ice cream and cake. They are that true to life.

Same goes for Seymour in "Banana Fish" and the narrator of "For Esme." Nobody got into the heads of brilliant but troubled young people better than Salinger. What we hear about Seymour as opposed to what we see creates a palpable (and beautiful)tension. The narrator of "For Esme"'s war inflicted emotional problems are drawn with such artistry as to flood over you as you read.

"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut," "Daumier-Smith's Blue Period," and "War with the Eskimos" to me fall into the "damn entertaining but not great" category. These stories are beautifully observed, funny, poignant and always a pleasure to read but lack that magic the first three have to spare. Of course that being said even being good but not great Salinger makes them better than most.

Finally "Teddy," "Down in the Dinghy" and "Pretty Mouth Green My Eyes" are good stories but I feel they suffer from being collected in the same book as the others. Each alone is enthralling but not a one of them is a patch on "Esme," or "Bananafish." Where the other stories feel like a full meal these come off more like snacks. Tasty but not quite filling.

If you like Salinger and want to read something by him that won't make you want to shoot a president or a sixties rock star this my friend is the book for you.

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Nov 27, 2009 Jeanette rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, classics, short-stories, to-be-read-again, extraordinary-prose

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 childre...more

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Mar 15, 2008 Noran Miss Pumkin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: one and all

Recommended to Noran by: JEF

Shelves: favoritve-of-my-live

simply my best friend during a 21 day 1,800 mile solo road trip along the Oregon coast--14 years ago, after my mother's passage. i was 33 and this was the first time i had gonw anywhere and done anything alone like this ever. this book dined with me for lunch and dinner--charming and a delight.
others were jealous of us, and the fun we had. i read slow,just like sipping a fine wine--to make it last as long as possible.

yes i had other with me, and i sent boxes of purchases back as well, this one h...more

10 likes · like · see review

Jun 17, 2007 Syd rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, fiction, classic, reviewed

Everyone has his or her own personal journey to follow. As a friend or relative, you can be there for them, offer advice and caution them when you see danger, but in the end, each person has to make a choice about how to live their lives. Only something inside of you will make a difference in you.

Just like Nemo and Marlin in Finding Nemo.

I finished J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories last night. I find that I enjoy reading Salinger. Unlike my experience with Virginia Woolf, who writes beautiful and poi...more

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Mar 09, 2007 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

The first and last of JD Salinger's Nine Stories are the best - A Perfect Day for a Bananafish and Teddy. All the stories have something to offer, though. I like Salinger's writing because he doesn't offer a tidy beginning or end. It's like he's saying "Here's the tidbit I'm giving you, so work with it or don't." There's no blatant theme that strings the stories together. Salinger's characters are psychologically complex, and often outsiders. Their method of thinking (if it's a story where we ar...more

6 likes · like · see review

Jul 04, 2007 Frederick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who love vignettes.

Shelves: stories, salinger

This is my favorite Salinger book. It's a collection of his stories, most or all of which appeared in THE NEW YORKER from about 1947 to 1960 or so.
I find a definite erotic appeal in these stories. The characters sit in bed, cradling the phone, smoking cigarettes in an eternal Sunday morning. You'd have to see NOW, VOYAGER for a more charged depiction of cigarette-smoking.
I believe these people exist. They are lonely, insistent and awkward. Somehow, they are beautiful. They are not decadent, but...more

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Apr 10, 2007 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Short story writers of the world

This is, I think, Salinger's best book. Begins and ends with a suicide, but oh well! In particular, "Perfect Day for Bannanafish" and "For Esme with Love and Squalor" and, maybe, "Teddy," are just amazing stories. There are about 15 stories I've read in my life that seem just perfect, and "For Esme" is one of them. It's probably the most affecting story about war that I've read (on par with "The Things They Carried"), though it actually dodges the war, itself -- i.e. the story takes place immedi...more

4 likes · like · see review

Jan 27, 2010 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2010

What is there to say? Salinger is brilliant. His ear is impeccable. The way his characters talk!! Ah me, it's just perfect. And the children! Goodness, these are the people for whom the word precocious was invented. Earnestly, touchingly, achingly precocious. And I don't even like children!

But the real point, of course, is that everyone and everything is just so sad. These are some of the saddest characters in literature, maybe. Everyone drinks too much, smokes too much, talks too much, cries to...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 13, 2013 E.B. rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction

Through Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger taught me the power of subtlety, precision and beauty.

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 21, 2008 Blake rated it 5 of 5 stars

Searching the gamut of American literature will find you no author like J.D. Salinger, the master of layering highly debated topics into morose stories of all sorts. This collection of - as suggested by the title - nine short stories is my favorite work by the well-known penman. I recommend this work to first-timers of Salinger for its pick it up then put it down capability. The short stories flow beautifully, and are arranged in such a way that one is able to digest the quite separate topics co...more

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Jun 27, 2011 Dolly Delightly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sitting anxiously on an unwieldy polypropylene chair and perusing one of those consummately moronic-fashion magazines to pass the time while waiting to be called in for my 5:45 appointment, I snarled and fawned at numerous depictions of girls lacking any vestige of verisimilitude. Eventually, benumbed by the thought of having to read a feature on how to make your own four-tier wedding cake, I plucked a book of short stories from my bag and began reading A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Funnily enou...more Sitting anxiously on an unwieldy polypropylene chair and perusing one of those consummately moronic-fashion magazines to pass the time while waiting to be called in for my 5:45 appointment, I snarled and fawned at numerous depictions of girls lacking any vestige of verisimilitude. Eventually, benumbed by the thought of having to read a feature on how to make your own four-tier wedding cake, I plucked a book of short stories from my bag and began reading A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Funnily enough, the story opens with a girl in a hotel room reading an article in a “pocket-sized women’s magazine” called “Sex is fun – or Hell,” while waiting for a long-distance phone call. The similarity was completely coincidental, but truth be known I would have rather read the aforementioned feature than one on baking. I fear it is a little too late for my culinary erudition.

News of J.D. Salinger’s death, on 27th January 2010, came as unexpectedly as the ending in A Perfect Day for Bananafish. I cried – suddenly, childishly – assailed by brackish melancholy and funerary newsprint; and later, spent the evening looking for answers at the bottom of a vodka glass. A somewhat ridiculous reaction perhaps but one of spontaneity rather than premeditation. My interest in books began at the age of 12 with the reading of The Catcher in the Rye. I read it many times thereafter and a lot of books since, including all of Salinger’s, but now looking back I think it was that particular book and that particular writer who singlehandedly shaped my reading preferences and thus his death was like a dissolution of a part of my own childhood. There are many reasons why I love Salinger, some obvious, others not, but one of them is captured perfectly in the following snapshot: when Elia Kazan asked Salinger’s permission to produce The Catcher in the Rye on Broadway, Salinger simply replied: “I cannot give my permission. I fear Holden wouldn’t like it.” And for that, and all his marvellous prose, Salinger will always be, for me at least, unmatched, unparalleled and, in fact, inimitable.

The first part of A Perfect Day for Bananafish takes place in a room at a Florida hotel full of “New York advertising men…monopolising the long distance lines”. The girl waiting to receive a call is the sort who wears elegant Saks blouses, varnishes her nails in classic-scarlet red and looks “as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she reached puberty.” Muriel eventually picks up the phone, after the fifth or the sixth ring, while nonchalantly passing her freshly lacquered left hand “back and forth through the air” to be greeted with her mother’s concerned: “I’ve been worried to death about you.” As the conversation progresses the reader is introduced to a character initially known as “he” who emerges as a somewhat facinorous personage or at least one whose peculiar behaviour and “funny business with trees” makes him sound unhinged. The “he” in question is Muriel’s husband, Seymour Glass, fresh off the boat from a battlefield in Germany and deeply troubled by the horrors he witnessed in the trenches. His wife, “Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948” as he calls her, is oblivious to her husband’s plight or anything beyond her insular world of conservative Manhattan. Muriel is bovaristic, conceited and superficial, even in her conversation with her mother which shifts without preamble from “her raving maniac” husband and the merits of psychoanalysis to her “blue coat” which too isn’t perfect and needs alterations. Salinger juxtaposes the subjects, the shallow with the weighty, to highlight the inanity of the former and the general lack of understanding about the latter. A Perfect Day for Bananafish centres around the after-effects of war, and the invisible wounds it leaves on those who have been privy to its monstrosities.

The subject matter is close to Salinger’s heart, and one he experienced first-hand while serving as a sergeant during World War II. Salinger landed on Utah Beach, Normandy, France, on D-Day in 1944 to fight against the Germans and spent the next year in battle, once writing to his mentor and Story magazine editor Whit Burnett to say he was unable to “describe the events” he had seen because they were too “horrendous to put into words.” The initial sights of war, the burning machine guns, wounded soldiers slipping away of exsanguination, crashing mortars, and fatal ambushes, remained with Salinger for the rest of his life. He never spoke about them, like Seymour, but they were said to have entrenched themselves on his memory. Seymour is in many ways a doppelganger of Salinger, endowed with the exact same feelings and post-traumatic stress symptoms that Salinger himself experienced.

Salinger’s foray into writing began in the Spring of 1939 when he audited a Friday evening short-story writing class at Columbia University given by Burnett, who later remembered Salinger as a quiet young man who sat in class “without taking notes, seemingly not listening, looking out the window.” Salinger daydreamed through the course then much to everyone’s surprise wrote a brilliant short story called The Young Folks which Burnett published in Story magazine in 1940. Salinger continued writing throughout his time in service, on a portable typewriter which he kept in his Jeep. The stories written during this time were published in various popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire, and depicted the subject of war. Later, Salinger refused to have the stories reprinted simply saying he didn’t “think they were worthy of publishing.”

Like Seymour, Salinger wrangled with “battle fatigue” and a sense of loneliness, isolation, ineffectuality and feelings of being a misfit long after he returned from the war. A Perfect Day for Bananafish is an implicit nod to Salinger’s own internal turmoil, a cathartic exercise to relay the largely undisclosed and ongoing tumult of a soldier off the battlefield. In a bid to steady his life, Salinger sought to get married and did so in 1945 to a woman of German extraction called Sylvia, with characteristically teutonic features, pale skin, and who, like Muriel, habitually sported “blood red lips and nails”. The couple’s relationship was “extremely intense both physically and emotionally” with Salinger once claiming that she had “bewitched him”. Sylvia filed for a divorce on 13th June 1946, and the two never saw each other again. He continued to write without much acclaim or success, until in 1948, after a decade of rejection slips, the New Yorker published A Perfect Day for Bananafish which kick-started his career as a serious writer. The second part of the story takes place on the beach outside the Florida hotel where a sprightly little girl, by the name of Sybil approaches a young man decubitus on the sand in his “terry cloth robe”.

The story’s main motif formulates in the latter part when Seymour is confronted with the innocence of a child who becomes an unwitting catalyst for the way he chooses to deal with his affliction, having quietly realised that his own innocence is irretrievably gone. And yet Seymour is momentarily drawn in to the little girl’s world, its childish fancies and naive whims, when he suggests the two go catch a “bananafish.” The little girl doesn’t question his yarn, but rather sets of on the adventure holding Seymour’s hand while he tells her about “bananafish” saying: “They lead a very tragic life. You know what they do Sybil? Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as 78 bananas…Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole…They die.” The thought of death, brings Seymour back to the present prompting him to stop abruptly and say “We’re going in now,” before kissing Sybil goodbye. A sense of sadness underlines the pathos of Seymour’s predicament, and yet while the exchange between him and the girl seems entirely care-free a sense of foreboding is never far away. The story ends back in hotel room 507, redolent “of new calfskin luggage and nail lacquer remover,” with a closing that shocks me to this day. Re-reading the story, and thereafter contemplating the most recent and bloody world conflicts and all the lives they’ve claimed, I realised that the old lie: “Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori,” has never seemed so old, devious or prevaricating as it does today.

[A Perfect Day for Bananafish is the first story in the For For Esmé – with Love and Squalor collection.](less)

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Jun 18, 2008 Jil rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: short story fans, wealthy white people in Connecticut

Recommended to Jil by: Matthew

Shelves: re-read

I read seven of these stories my freshman year because I had a crush on someone that liked this book. I had railed against Catcher in the Rye and he said HEY, my lady, HEY - read this, you will like Salinger better.

He was, of course, right. Granted, Salinger suffers from uh, what most writers do - having a very limited area of expertise, which is often disguised by referring to this limitation as "STYLE". Salinger's STYLE is to write about wealthy, unhappy people, probably because he was one.

I f...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Jigar Brahmbhatt rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut" is so good. There's nothing here, just two people chatting... about nothing in particular. A little girl appears and then disappears in between, she has an imaginary friend. Her mother doesn't even bother to contemplate it. She is mean maybe, that's what we know about her yet, or we think we do. Then something emerges, like your face in a steamy mirror. It is so subtle, it touches your intellect and leaves in an instant. I closed the book, and kept wondering for few...more

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Aug 01, 2008 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: You know who you are, Salinger fans.

Recommended to Rob by: Marybeth

I am kinda torn. The stories are rather varied and subtle, so its kinda pointless to go into at breif what I learned from the book; I would much rather review it. But I feel pretty inexpert at approaching these stories. They are rather short and I am a poor judge of short stories. They arn't incredibly varied, focusing on those New York or New England upper class subjects focused on a different plane of reality; be it intellectually, emotionally or metaphysical differences that set them apart. A...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Bethan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories-novellas, regular-fiction

Possibly the best short stories I've read, which is no mean feat since I've tended to agree that the short story may be the hardest literary form to do well. The main thing I notice is that seven of the nine stories feature children as a major theme, mixed in with adult psychology and themes. This especially amuses me because a misopedist recommended these stories to me...

Good recommendation though, especially since I didn't like Catcher in the Rye – this shows a different Salinger style. They...more

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Dec 08, 2011 Jeremy added it

Shelves: american-fiction

I've been apprehensive about Salinger since thoroughly loathing the Catcher in the Rye in high school. But what was so eye-rollingly bland to me about Holden Caulfield and his extended pity party is also what makes Salinger an incredible short story writer. He's able to create these small, delicate little domestic portraits of post-war Americans that have this precise, lighter-than air quality. And he writes little kids better than just about anyone. Yet these stories are often grounded by this...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 17, 2007 Kimberly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-time-favorites

Salinger is my favorite author and a part of me wishes Catcher in the Rye wasn't as popular as it is, because it overshadows his other works. Holden isn't even a character of repeated focus; the Glass family is his true work of art. Some of the tales in Nine Stories are Glass pieces, and when you combine them with Franny & Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters / Seymour: an Introduction, you get a full view of the family with all its flaws. Rumor has it Wes Anderson based the Tenenb...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 23, 2008 Sarah Wood rated it 5 of 5 stars

Can't believe I never read this before. One of the best things I've ever read.

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Jun 05, 2007 Mohamadreza najafi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

یکی از بهترین مجموعه داستانهای کوتاهی که تا به حا خوندم -داریوش مهرجویی با اقتباس از داستان اول این مجموعه یعنی :یک روز خوش برای موز ماهی بخشی از فیلم پری رو ساخت و جذابیت شخصیت اصلی این رمان خود نویسنده را رها نکرد تا جایی که خود او بعد ها رمانی در باره ی این شخصیت نوشت :سیمور پیشگفتار-نجاران تیر های سقف را بالاتر بگذارید

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Jun 07, 2013 David Bonesteel rated it 5 of 5 stars

What is the opposite of "prolific"? Answer: J.D. Salinger. The reclusive author has a rather meager output compared with other writers of his stature, but the extraordinary quality of his work has assured his exalted place in American letters. Though I was impressed by "Catcher in the Rye," I found it to be a bit overrated. (I intend to reread it someday to see if I'm really willing to stand by that statement.) For me, it is the short fiction in this volume that truly reveals his talent. Salinge...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Courtney H. rated it 3 of 5 stars

I will preface this by saying I usually prefer novels to short stories. Jhumpa Lahiri's stories seem to be the exception to this. I think my attitude toward Nine Stories--which is best summed up as "meh"--is owed in no small part to my attitude to short stories in general. They just aren't my thing. Also, Salinger's characters just aren't my thing. I didn't like Holden, but more importantly, I didn't care enough to rile myself up to anything more than a vague disinterested dislike of him. He's a...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Kacey rated it 4 of 5 stars

There is no question that Salinger has a way with words. Even when confined to a short story form, he does so much that you feel like you need to read it over again just so you can absorb everything that's going on. So much is said in so little time.

Each one of the stories is distinct. Some are shocking, some are strange, and some are tragic. I think the most chilling story was The Laughing Man. Most of the stories don't have an "ending". Some of them do, but most of them feel like it's just ove...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Amir rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-story

همیشه داستان کوتاه‌ها رو می‌ذارم برای وقتی که توی مستراحم. اساسا یکی از لحظات افتخارآمیز زندگی هر کسی می‌تونه این باشه که موقع بیرون اومدن از مستراح، اشک شوق توی چشماش جمع شه و لذت ببره از این‌که به جای زور زدن و سرخ و سیاه شدن، تونسته با آرامش یه داستان کوتاه رو تموم کنه. بعد این وسط گاهی نویسنده‌ها، انگار که خبر داشته باشن که خواننده کجاست، رو دست می‌زنن به آدم و شروع می‌کنن به رقابت در کاری داری انجام میدی. یکی از همین نویسنده‌ها جی. دی. سلینجر خودمون هست که یکی از مزخرف‌ترین مجموعه‌های داستا...more همیشه داستان کوتاه‌ها رو می‌ذارم برای وقتی که توی مستراحم. اساسا یکی از لحظات افتخارآمیز زندگی هر کسی می‌تونه این باشه که موقع بیرون اومدن از مستراح، اشک شوق توی چشماش جمع شه و لذت ببره از این‌که به جای زور زدن و سرخ و سیاه شدن، تونسته با آرامش یه داستان کوتاه رو تموم کنه. بعد این وسط گاهی نویسنده‌ها، انگار که خبر داشته باشن که خواننده کجاست، رو دست می‌زنن به آدم و شروع می‌کنن به رقابت در کاری داری انجام میدی. یکی از همین نویسنده‌ها جی. دی. سلینجر خودمون هست که یکی از مزخرف‌ترین مجموعه‌های داستانیش رو کتاب کرده زیر عنوان: نه داستان یا همون دل‌تنگی‌های نقاش خیابان چهل و هشتم. نکته‌ی جالب این‌که ترجمه‌ی این کار هم یکی از زشت‌ترین ترجمه‌‌هایی بود که توی چند سال اخیر خونده بودم. یعنی متن ترجمه ضمن وفاداری به متن اصلی، چنان فارسی بی‌خاصیت و غلطی داره که توی بعضی از بخش‌ها واقعا توهم برم می‌داشت که نویسنده و مترجم خبر دارن که کتاب کجا خونده میشه. این قضیه همین‌جور ادامه داشت تا رسیدیم به داستان تقدیم به ازمه با عشق و نکبت. بالاخره یه داستان استخون‌دار با چند تا شخصیتِ خوب توی یه فضای معرکه پا گرفتن توی ذهن. و بعد از اون خودِ داستان دل‌تنگی‌های نقاش... که باز کاری بود دوست‌داشتنی. قصه‌ی قصه‌ی یه اسنوبِ دوست‌داشتنی هست که برای تدریس پا میشه میره کانادا و بقیه قضایا. همین دو تا داستان برای رستگار شدن این کتاب کافیه، مخصوصا اگه بشه متن اصلی‌شون رو گیر آورد.(less)

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Nov 30, 2012 Hannah rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite story in this compilation was, by far, Just Before the War with the Eskimos. The opening scene displays two young adolescent girls, one of them - Ginnie - (Virginia) is the protagonist.

Later, he story portrays a brief encounter between Ginnie Mannox and two different men. The first one is her friend's brother, Franklin, who is apparently infatuated with someone else, Ginnie's sister - who doesn't reciprocate, even though he wrote her eight letters. He goes on and on about her, how te...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Larry rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this when I read Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey when I was about 14. As with Franny and Zooey I went back to see if I liked it as much or at all, not remembering any of the stories.
My poor memory was a boon in this case. It was like discovering a wonderful book for the first time. Those who don't like Salinger will find many things to detract from his singular narrative style. This generally happens with with an author that writes in a style he has superior command over, endgende...more I read this when I read Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey when I was about 14. As with Franny and Zooey I went back to see if I liked it as much or at all, not remembering any of the stories.
My poor memory was a boon in this case. It was like discovering a wonderful book for the first time. Those who don't like Salinger will find many things to detract from his singular narrative style. This generally happens with with an author that writes in a style he has superior command over, endgendering in some, abject loathing, genterally due to hearing all the praise heaped upon the author. His style is not for everyone. The scenes are very basic, sketched beautifully and with sometimes a sparseness to the quantity of (the quality does not wane.) No there will be know world travelling spies running around the world; or heroe and the like in a campaign of fighting monsters and mythical beings in a ever building crescendo of almost epic proportions.
The protagonists are of the generation where newspapers advertised the helpful restorative qualities of cigarettes, or by products of that error that smoked as a perfunctory habit and with little thought as many will quickly run to the nearest pc if it is not glued to their hand and access it; or put a cell phone to their hand or texting without giving it a thought.
Digaloge is what drives Salinger's stories and the characters explore many themes, from exhibiting a kindness and loss, to a sense of child-like innocence that can turn spiritual and at the same time both enlightening and obsfucating. Another words Salinger captures character personalities with dynamic form-not static expactations-outside the box, even when the box is wrapped in plain brown paper to be unwrapped by the reader to discover in the most urbane of settings, the subjects explored are all given attention to detail with that of a man constantly asking why or what motivates people; and this gives a dimension that does not need superfluos and almost plot hindering change of scenery. The only defect with this book, is that it was not longer! (less)

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About J.D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he publishe...more Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.

The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed. He made headlines around the globe in June 2009, after filing a lawsuit against another writer for copyright infringement resulting from that writer's use of one of Salinger's characters from The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.
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“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.” — 424 people liked it

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