Review of Nine Stories By J D Salinger

Read Nine stories by J D Salinger. My first Salinger. In fact of late I have been feeling an urgent need to address a serious gap in my reading.  I find that I have not read anything in last 17 years ( a span that is coterminous with my job). As it is, I was never a voracious reader after I graduated from comics. Still I manage to cover some distance in popular book landscape. Agatha Christie, P G Wodehouse, best sellers trash along with some sprinkling of Maugham, Russian authors was the limit of my literary reading during the university days. Pace was slow but steady. However all that come to a halt seventeen years ago when I got into the job. Not  much to report for these 17 years but this needs to change. So baby steps in the form of short stories. 

Back to Salinger, In the already short list American literature is absent in its entirety. Twain, Harper lee, Roth and many other have been holding attraction but may be not enough to break through my lethargy. Salinger is a random choice to attack that field. 

Nine stories is a realized work, no doubt about it. Voice is established and craft is blemish free.  Stories are short (they are meant to be by definition) but never insufficient. Reading him is like watching a movie. He uses dialogues for description. Description line are comparatively few but they support the word picture created by the dialogues with uncanny accuracy. If he is conveying indifference (Bananafish) or emptiness of a day before going to war front (Esme) he is  good use of my time. However I am yet to understand the genius tag that is almost reflexively attached to the author.

weaving that in dialogues and supporting sparse but effective description line. There is good story plot in each one of them and that has been executed with sophistication and with a regard for intelligence of the reader. I liked reading Nine stories and found it a good book. However, it failed to explain the Salinger phenomenon to me.

I think there are three reasons.

First is the long stay in dark continent of  non reading. I may have lost the appreciation of good literature. Anything classic or classical is an acquired taste. ‘Intelligence of taste’ is liable to get blunted with non use.

Secondly, I suppose I have read very little to be appreciate his true genius. I think I should quickly graduate to Cather in the Rye.

And, finally, narrative of 1948 may have become a bit dated now. I found the ethos of the stories fairly undamaged by the time. However, what might have been breathtakingly new tropes of prose writing then may have become familiar now. 

So onward to Cather in the Rye