December 8, 2009
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger Publisher: Little Brown - Boston Date: May 1, 1953. There are a lot of you out there with your own Salinger moments.  A time when you were handed one of his books by a friend, or picked up a beaten copy at a book sale.  For me, I was 16 and in love for the first time.  She was much smarter and far better read I was.  One night, as I snuck out of her ground floor bedroom window, she passed me a battered copy of Catcher in the Rye and implored me to read it on the way home.  The maroon cover was folded and worn.  It was about a mile walk from her house to mine.  It was the middle of the night, around 1 or 2 am, and by the time I reached the end of her street I was in love. Snow was falling - that big fluffy snow - and no one was out there but me.  I was alone in the muffled dark winter night, walking and reading.  My path home lead through a small forest of large trees and across a well-lit park where a baseball diamond sat in the far corner.  I stopped and sat in the dugout and read for a couple hours with the snow falling all around.  It was one of those moments.  I could not put the book down. That night was half my life ago now, but after reading A Perfect Day for Bananafish, the first story in Nine Stories, it became vivid all over again.  I had read Franny & Zooey a few years later and didn’t have nearly the same connection to that book.  I re-read Catcher in the Rye a few times and found myself in that group of people who grew up and found Holden whiny and almost unbearable.  That Salinger magic had faded for me until I picked up this book. I’m not qualified to dissect what Salinger does here on a technical level, but there is a certain ease to his writing that I find mesmerizing.  I’m sure a number of you feel the same way.  I’m just disappointed in myself for not picking this book up sooner. - Jon. Eudora Welty’s original NYT review here.

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

Publisher: Little Brown - Boston

Date: May 1, 1953.

There are a lot of you out there with your own Salinger moments.  A time when you were handed one of his books by a friend, or picked up a beaten copy at a book sale.  For me, I was 16 and in love for the first time.  She was much smarter and far better read I was.  One night, as I snuck out of her ground floor bedroom window, she passed me a battered copy of Catcher in the Rye and implored me to read it on the way home.  The maroon cover was folded and worn.  It was about a mile walk from her house to mine.  It was the middle of the night, around 1 or 2 am, and by the time I reached the end of her street I was in love.

Snow was falling - that big fluffy snow - and no one was out there but me.  I was alone in the muffled dark winter night, walking and reading.  My path home lead through a small forest of large trees and across a well-lit park where a baseball diamond sat in the far corner.  I stopped and sat in the dugout and read for a couple hours with the snow falling all around.  It was one of those moments.  I could not put the book down.

That night was half my life ago now, but after reading A Perfect Day for Bananafish, the first story in Nine Stories, it became vivid all over again.  I had read Franny & Zooey a few years later and didn’t have nearly the same connection to that book.  I re-read Catcher in the Rye a few times and found myself in that group of people who grew up and found Holden whiny and almost unbearable.  That Salinger magic had faded for me until I picked up this book.

I’m not qualified to dissect what Salinger does here on a technical level, but there is a certain ease to his writing that I find mesmerizing.  I’m sure a number of you feel the same way.  I’m just disappointed in myself for not picking this book up sooner.

- Jon.

Eudora Welty’s original NYT review here.