"For Esmé–With Love and Squalor" by J. D. Salinger

Deal Me In Short Story #8

This week I drew the 4 of Spades, which corresponded to "For Esmé–With Love and Squalor" from the book Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. As I explained in my post on another short story in this collection, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," I read most of Salinger's stories long ago. It is lovely to read them again and experience them anew.

The story opens with a man describing his encounter with two children, Esmé and Charles, in a town in Devon, England. The narrator is a soldier, and had just completed an invasion training course. Esmé offers to write to the soldier, and requests that he write a story for her. She suggests he make it "extremely squalid and moving."

The second part of the story is told in third person and describes Staff Sergeant X and his fellow soldiers, "in Gaufurt, Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day." It is definitely very moving. Even before I started reading this section, with little memory of what it described, I became very emotional.

This story was immediately popular when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1950 and continues to be one of Salinger's best known stories. Before I started rereading the stories in Nine Stories, I did not know about Salinger's wartime experiences, which are thought to have influenced his writing. Reading this story and learning more about Salinger was a great experience. I will continue reading the stories in this book and find copies of the two other books containing novellas by Salinger (Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction).

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. The challenge is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

T

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger

Deal Me In Short Story #5

This week I drew the 3 of Spades, which corresponded to "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" from the book Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. I read this story years ago, along with all his other short stories and novellas. I remember loving his stories, and was eager to read them again, but afraid I would be disappointed. I was not.

It seems that with most short stories it is impossible to say much without revealing spoilers, so this is just a brief introduction. Several of J. D. Salinger's stories and novellas feature one or more members of the Glass family. This was the first one to do that, and it relates the activities of one day when Seymour Glass and his wife Muriel are on vacation in Florida. At the opening of the story, Muriel is talking to her mother on the telephone, and it is obvious that her mother is concerned about Seymour's mental state. Seymour has recently returned from Germany, where he was stationed in the Army.

Salinger submitted this story to the New Yorker in 1947, and editors at that magazine worked with him to revise the story. It was published in 1948 and was met with much acclaim.  J. D. Salinger is a very famous writer, and most famous for his decision to stop writing and stay out of the public eye. All of that is well documented and I am not in any way an expert, so that is all I will say about that. He is the author of one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which is probably the most well-known work. I loved that too when I read it initially but I am less sure that I will love it when I re-read it.

So the takeaway from reading this story is that I am eager to read more of them. One more is on my Deal Me In Short Story list, and I will be reading the rest throughout the year. There are two other books that contain novellas or short stories, and I plan to find copies of those and re-read them too.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.