On Reading J. D. Salinger's "Nine Stories"

Thoughts On It

Reading J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger, the Manhattan-born, seclusive, master storyteller gives (as the title says) nine stories. They are all more on the literary side with minimalistic plot, and deep focus on character.

His first story "A Perfect Day For Banana Fish" was quite interesting, but startling. The interest comes from Seymour, a veteran from World War II (which, I learned, J.D. Salinger was involved in along with Hemmingway). Seymour is the main character of this story, and in the beginning, a girl, who presumably is Seymour's fiancé, has a conversation with her mother. The mother asks constantly if her daughter is okay. Through the subtext of the phone conversation we learn that Seymour might be verbally abusive, and seclusive:

"He won't take his bathrobe off? Why not?"

"I don't know. I guess because he's so pale."

"My goodness, he needs the sun. Can't you make him?"

"You know Seymour," said the girl, and crossed her legs again "He says he doesn't want a lot of fools looking at his tattoo."

"He doesn't have any tattoo! Did he get one in the Army?"

"No, mother. No, dear," said the girl, and stood up. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow, maybe."

In this little snippet we get a lot about Seymour, his fiancé, and the fiancé's mother. We also get a taste of how Salinger uses human ticks to create a rhythm during dialogue. In most of his stories, people cross and uncross their legs, take long drawls from cigarettes, dig in their nose, laugh, or scratch a body part between words.

The story finally moves on to Seymour. He goes out onto the beach and plays with a little girl named Sybil. This is where it gets strange. Not only does he verbally coerce the girl into telling him where she's from, he also persuades her to go out into the ocean with him to find BananaFish. He puts her, belly down, on a raft and pushes her out. He tells her to search for BananaFish, and licks the soles of her feet once causing her to scream. He tells her to shush, goes up to his room, and on elevator ride up, he says to a woman there, "If you want to look at my feet, say so...But don't be a God-damned sneak about it." Which, to me, was both hilarious, and extremely scary. Seymour went up to his room and killed himself and that was the end of the story. I still don't understand, but many of his stories had endings like this, ending with an emotional burst or a final action.

The rest of his stories revolve around the war, and they often put a focus on how difficult it is for everyone effected by it.

Another thing about his stories was that they were all connected. All of his stories were in one universe which made it more of a book rather than a collection of short-stories.

Often, during the ending of his stories I am left with emotion. I leave feeling warm or cold or confused, but in each of his stories I had to sit back and think about what I jusst read. I think that was the biggest pay off after-all. This weekend Salinger gave me another reason to write: to provoke smiles, sadness, fear and thoughts.