A second look at Nine Stories

I should probably preface this by saying that I plan to name my first child Seymour. Yes, as in see more glass. So I will try to be objective in relating my thoughts on Nine Stories, but… don’t you say that I didn’t warn you.

Readability: Think a good book is always dense and full of long sentences and extra adjectives? Wrong, and this is the book that proves it. This is a book to read on a long rainy weekend, and it won’t take much longer because you won’t want to put it down.

Enjoyability: Extraordinary. I feel like some short stories are sort of hard to get into, and then by the time you have they are over. But with Salinger’s stories I feel in it, right away, and then I’m just sad when they’re over. These stories make me happy, sad, wistful, hopeful, laugh (yes, out loud… and I’m not being facetious, they really do). This is a book that I want to re-read often, and have, and will.

Best quotes:
"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."
- de Daumier-Smith

"I want them to have a nice time while they're alive, because they like having a nice time.. but they don't love me and Booper - that's my sister - that way. I mean they don't seem agble to love us just the way we are. They don't seem able to love us unl3ess they can keep changing us a little bit. They love their reasons for loving us almost as much as they love us, and most of the time more. It's not so good, that way."
- Teddy

"I remember wanting to do something about that enormous-faced wristwatch she was wearning - perhaps suggest that she try wearing it around her waist."
- X

Favorite story: Hard to choose… I love ‘Down at the Dinghy,’ ‘Bananafish,’ and ‘For Esme – With Love and Squalor’ so much I hardly know what to say about them. That they are charming and sad and perfect, I suppose. But in this re-reading of Nine Stories I was unexpectedly struck by ‘The Laughing Man.’ I love picturing a bus full of adoring ten-year-old boys, listening rapturously to their leader as he tells stories about a renegade hero whose hides his hideous face (smashed in a vice by kidnappers when he was a young child, of course) behind a red veil. And then being stunned and heart broken when… well, I won’t give it all away. Call it a microcosm of growing up, maybe. Weird and wonderful.

Least favorite: Hands down, ‘Pretty mouth and green my eyes.’ Suffice to say it leaves me feeling let down and a little cheated. Although it must also be said that being my least favorite of this bunch isn’t saying much.

Favorite character: Seymour, Boo Boo, and the Chief… I think what makes Salinger’s writing about children so poignant is that he treats them like they are actually people, and that’s what I like about his best characters, too.

Least favorite: It’s a tie between that jerk Muriel (I know you liked her, Seymour, but she wasn’t good enough for you) and Teddy’s parents (also enormous jerks). We’d all have been better off without them.

Recommended for: people who liked Catcher in the Rye, people who like children, people who want to like short stories and so far just don’t, people who live in rainy places.