Anyone on here like JD Salinger?

[Kankurette]

Not just The Catcher in the Rye - which I'm pretty cigs about, because good fucking Christ is Holden an annoying narrator - but the Glass family stories as well, which are:
- Franny & Zooey
 - Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
 - Seymour: An Introduction

There's also For Esme with Love and Squalor, which We Are Scientists named one of their albums after, and has three Glass family short stories in it: A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut and Down at the Dinghy.

An introduction for people not familiar with the non-Catcher books: the Glass family are a bunch of former child prodigies whose parents, Les and Bessie, are a former vaudeville double act. All of them appear on a radio show called It's a Wise Child, under various fake names. Seymour and Buddy get the most screentime: Seymour is the oldest, the centre of the family, and his wedding (which he blows off because he's too happy to get married) is the subject of Raise High the Roof Beam, and Buddy is the narrator for all three Glass family novellas and, I'm guessing, Salinger's self-insert. Franny (a girl) and Zooey (a boy) are the youngest and are both actors. Zooey notably has a rant at Franny that lasts 9 pages. There's also another girl, Boo Boo, and a pair of twins, Walt (who dies in an explosion) and Waker (who becomes a priest), although they only get mentioned in passing and are offscreen most of the time in the novellas.

The Glass family books are kind of an acquired taste because Salinger had a huge hard-on for Eastern mysticism, Buddhism and Taoism and whatnot, and Franny & Zooey and Seymour are both full of it (although Franny & Zooey also has a fair bit of Christianity discussion in it, mainly because Franny gets really obsessed with The Way of the Pilgrim and reciting the Jesus Prayer). I've not seen The Royal Tenenbaums but apparently the family in that are based on the Glasses, because they're all super fucked-up child prodigies. It took me a few goes to get through Seymour because it was just endless bloody description of Seymour's hair, nose, body etc. and how amazingly brilliant and clever he was. I'm not sure if he was supposed to be Salinger's ideal man or what, but Salinger was one of those authors who's really, really in love with one of his characters. There's an unpublished short story featuring him called Hapworth 19, 1924, which is INCREDIBLY FUCKING LONG and which I've never managed to get through. Teddy, a child prodigy who appears in the story of the same name in For Esme..., is very similar to Seymour, although I'm not sure if he was a prototype.

Fun fact: loads of you probably know that Blur used to be called Seymour. They were named after Seymour Glass.

(Thanks to 13 schoolyards for the idea.)

ETA: there's also a theory that Franny is pregnant in Franny & Zooey. Fuck knows where that comes from.

[Dayraven]

I tend to suspect that whatever later Salinger writing exists, it's mostly more Glass Family material with even less self-restraint.

Fuck knows where that comes from.

Well, when a man and a woman love each other v-

[dontpaintyourteeth]

I mostly remember thinking Holden was a little prick but it's probably 20 years since I read Catcher. Haven't read any of the rest.

[selectivememory]

Catcher in the Rye is a fantastic and heart-breaking book, and also IMO probably one of the most misunderstood novels of the last century.

Been too long since I read the other stuff though (Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey are the other ones I've read), but I definitely liked them at the time and I'm sure they're also great.

[13 schoolyards]

I was a massive fan (still am I guess, hurry up with some new material), so much so that I read both the biographies that were available pre-death - Ian Hamilton's one that had the guts torn out when Salinger demanded his personal correspondence be cut out and faded to black at the point when Salinger went into recluse mode, and "the other one", which was crap but did keep going into the 90s, mostly so the author could invent Age Gap Twitter and claim that JD would have been a pedo if he (and his partners) had both been twenty years younger.

Possibly a more sensitive biographer would have said Salinger clearly came back from WWII messed up and emotionally stunted and while his body kept on aging, mentally he remained the mid-20s man who went to war, which was why his later relationships were all with women in their 20s when he met them. Or maybe he was a creep.

And yeah, while I like the Glass family stories a lot, drawing a line from them through Hapworth - which is borderline unreadable for lengthy stretches - doesn't suggest that any of his later writing would be of anything but academic interest. I'm sure if he'd written CATCHER 2: TIME TO RYE we'd have seen it by now

[Kankurette]

I don't know about him being a paedo, but wasn't he abusive to a partner?

I was obsessed with Salinger too as a teen but oddly, not Catcher in the Rye. I actually read that one after the Glass family stories.

Hapworth 16, 1924 apparently was so long it nearly filled an entire copy of The New Yorker.

[gilbertharding]

Never read any, but loved this:

[Kankurette]

That's definitely an improvement on Mark Chapman. The Divine Comedy's Gin-Soaked Boy has the line 'I'm the catcher in the rye' too.

[13 schoolyards]

I don't know about him being a paedo, but wasn't he abusive to a partner?

I was obsessed with Salinger too as a teen but oddly, not Catcher in the Rye. I actually read that one after the Glass family stories.

Hapworth 16, 1924 apparently was so long it nearly filled an entire copy of The New Yorker.

Yeah, it takes up pretty much the entire issue aside from the reviews and the usual stuff up the front. There was an attempt to get it published as a book in Salinger's lifetime (the 90s I think) but a reviewer at the New York Times got wind of it and wrote a lengthy review / article that was basically "it's shit" and Salinger went back in his box and took Hapworth with him.

I'm not sure about him being physically abusive, but I'm pretty sure at least one of his former partners has written her own biography where he comes off as cold, remote, self-centered, rude, heartless, emotionally abusive and all the rest of the "literary giant" cliches.

Then again, supposedly all the locals in the small town where he lived were very protective of him (he was hardly a recluse, he just didn't do press and the locals weren't keen on rubberneckers), so he can't have been a monster all the time

[Maureen Brontë]

I live on my own and attack anyone who tries to photograph me, so yeah, I suppose I am a bit.

[willbo]

I read Catcher in my late teens and was amazed by it. Dunno if I found him likable, but having mainly only read fantasy and horror till then, I'd never read a novel with such a vulnerable, raw emotions, realistically lost character before. Read all his other stuff and his daughter's memoir shortly after, but haven't ever gone back to his stuff. I remember finding the short stories pretty powerful too.

[Kankurette]

Teddy was the one that really haunted me.

Spoiler alert

The kid predicted his own death, although Salinger leaves it ambiguous.

[close]

[almostnearlybutnotquite]

I've only ever read Catcher and only because it seemed to have influenced Mark Chapman so much.It was OK but I couldn't find anything insightful or shocking in it.I'll probably read it again sometime.

[Mobbd]

A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut and Down at the Dinghy.

Hi Kanks. I've been meaning to read some JDS beyond Catcher for years. Inspired by your thread and how I recently picked up a pleasantly battered old copy of Nine Stories, I figured now's the time.

All I've read so far is Bananafish. I liked it. Good dialogue. The ending was

Spoiler alert

a genuine surprise. So strange it wasn't spoiled for me in after all these years of being a book nerd.

I knew the story wasn't long so I kept wondering where it could all possibly go. And then it went there. Abruptly. I liked it

[close]

The stuff with Sylvia was

Spoiler alert

well nonce.

[close]

I was glad he didn't

Spoiler alert

shoot his missus though. Only the final line shows what happened. That's a lot of pressure on a final tiny sentence. Good craft.

[close]

Anyway, the other two stories you mention are in the same volume. I'll read 'em shortly.

[Mobbd]

Catcher in the Rye is a fantastic and heart-breaking book, and also IMO probably one of the most misunderstood novels of the last century.

I think so too. I like Catcher a lot. My partner (whose tastes I usually agree with) hates it. Finds it cringe. Lots of people do. I'll never understand it. I see in it a beautiful, well-written novel. And it's funny too! In the way of pathos. The way Holden doesn't understand how the world sees him and how he should act in it is charming and beautiful and heart-breaking. Wonderful. A class act.

[Mobbd]

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

I didn't care a great deal for this one. It wasn't bad to read or anything but of the four stories I've read so far, this was the one that blew me away the least.

I guess I had sympathy for the main girl and how she felt she'd made the wrong choices. I for one wouldn't want to be married to that idiot. But it all felt a bit inconsequential to me. I wasn't sure what to take from it other than it being a well-enough written slice of life.

All of these stories have full Wikipedia entries, generally including a sourced "analysis" section. For this one, a theorist is cited as observing a parallel between the daughter's imaginary friend and the main girl's lost love. They both have a shadow companion as it were. I can see that, I suppose.

This business of Walt (the lost love) being a member of the Glass family is fine and all but that doesn't seem to be on the page. It's just something JD said at some point. Maybe I'll appreciate this better when I've read more about Walt Glass. Is he always off-page like Maris from Frasier?

So yeah, not a bad time or anything but the least enjoyable of the stories so far (for me).

[Mobbd]

Onto Just Before the War with the Eskimos. I loved this story. It's basically a character study of one particular character.

Spoiler alert

He's a charismatic bum, an idler. The girl protagonist of the story clearly doesn't approve of him but finds him alluring. She disapproves of but is amused by his constant swearing, is intrigued by his being unshaven and listless. Lovely stuff.

[close]

What on earth is the end about though?

Spoiler alert

Slob guy gives her half a sandwich, which she doesn't want to eat but takes it to be polite. She hides it in her jacket pocket. After leaving, she removes the sandwich as if to throw it away but puts it back. This prompts her to recall an incident in which she pocketed a dead "Easter chick" and took three weeks to dispose of it properly.

I'm not sure what an Easter Chick might be: to me it's a decorative cake topper or something but this seems to be a real animal. Did people give each other living chicks for Easter in the 1940s?

[close]

Google doesn't enlighten me but a Salinger story wouldn't be complete without some archaic mid-century reference to something completely real but bonkers and I enjoy that.

Anyway, my read on the ending is that

Spoiler alert

she's a "secret slob" just like Stradlater in Catcher. I don't know why but I always found that phrase memorable and I was glad to remember it while reading this story.

[close]

JD sure knows how to title a piece as well. The titular "war" is just a throwaway line in the story and a very cute one.

[Mobbd]

For Esme with Love and Squalor

This was another good one. Wikipedia's analysis section doesn't help me this time though: it doesn't mention the thing I found most interesting, which was the switch from first- to third-person narration at the halfway point.

The story begins in the anonymous first-person (anonymous because one might assume it's Salinger talking directly to us or else it's simply an unnamed first-person narrator) and then, after telling us he will do so, he recounts his wartime story through a third-person character, "Sergeant X." It's an entertaining switch and all comes together with Esme's letter at the end but I'm not sure why he did it this way or what the intended effect might have been. Interesting though. Stylish too.

The character portraits of Esme and Charles are very charming and entertaining.

(He does seem interested in children though, doesn't he? I can see why people might think he was a paed. I think it's probably innocent, albeit a bit unusual.)

[Kankurette]

Walt gets mentioned in Franny & Zooey and Seymour/Raise High the Roof Beam, but he's always offscreen and Franny & Zooey is set after he died. Same with Waker, and Boo Boo, although she does appear in Down at the Dinghy.