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Nine Stories
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Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Author: J.D. Salinger
Publisher: Back Bay Books
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Our Price: $10.35
You Save: $ 3.64 ( 26% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Author: J.D. Salinger
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Average Customer Rating:
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Nine Stories Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316767729
ISBN: 0316767727
Label: Back Bay Books
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-01-30
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Studio: Back Bay Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316767729
ISBN: 0316767727
Label: Back Bay Books
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2001-01-30
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Studio: Back Bay Books
Editorial Review of Nine Stories
In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.
The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence. "A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."
Customer Reviews of Nine Stories
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Salinger Hits Nine Home Runs.
Review: Published after The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories is quintessential Salinger. Having first read Salinger's collection of Nine Stories as a college student, these short stories have remained in my thoughts for years.
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (first published in the The New Yorker, January 31, 1948) tells the story of war veteran Seymour Glass, who commits suicide while on his honeymoon with his wife, Muriel, in Florida. While Muriel discusses fashion with her mother at the hotel bar, suicidal Seymour sits on the beach with an innocent young girl, Sybil, who becomes fascinated with him. Rating: A perfect 5/5.
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (first published in the The New Yorker, March 20, 1948) tells the story of suburban housewife, Eloise, still haunted by the death of Walt Glass, who was killed in an explosion during the war. As suggested by the subtle sideways glance of a drunken friend, Eloise has never recovered from Walt's death. This is a story as relevant today as when it was first published sixty years ago. Rating: 5/5.
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948) tells the story of two high school classmates, Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, in a dispute over money. Ginnie and Selena play tennis together every Saturday, but Selena never offers to pay for their cab. When Ginnie confronts her, Selena explains, "It may interest you to know . . . that my mother is very ill." After meeting Selena's brother Franklin (who offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich) and his friend Eric at Selena's apartment, Ginnie has a sudden change of heart about the cab fare. Rating: 5/5.
"The Laughing Man" (first published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1949) tells a story within a story about a nine-year-old, who (along with his fellow "Comanches") would spend afternoons with "the Chief" (a Staten Island law student). At the end of each day, the Chief would tell them a new chapter in his on-going serial about a deformed criminal, which ultimately becomes the story of his doomed relationship with his summer girlfriend. Rating: 5/5.
"Down at the Dinghy" tells the story of Boo Boo Glass's peculiar young son, Lionel, who overhears a house servant, Sandra, refer to his father as a "big sloppy kike." Rating: 5/5.
"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" (first published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950) tells the story of Army Sergeant X (Buddy Glass?), who reminisces over a young girl, Esmé, who helped him to endure the squalor of WWII. He promises to correspond with Esmé and to write a story in her honor, but then suffers an emotional breakdown. This story becomes Sergeant X's recovery. Rating: 5/5.
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" tells the story of two lawyers, in which one is distracted from a romantic evening with his love interest by his friend's midnight phone call about his missing wife. His troublesome wife, we learn, has failed to return home from a party. Rating: 5/5.
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" tells the humorous story of a newly- hired art teacher at a correspondence "art academy," who falls hopelessly in love with a religious painting, the work of his sole pupil (a nun). Rating: 4/5.
"Teddy" (first published in The New Yorker, January 31, 1953) tells the story of a ten-year-old genius, Teddy McArdle. Revealing that he is wise beyond his years, Teddy discusses the very nature of existence with a graduate student, Nicholson, on board an oceanliner. Teddy recalls a previous life in which he was a man in India who was "making very nice spiritual advancement," but stopped praying upon meeting a woman. Teddy envisions his own death by being pushed into the empty pool by his sister. The haunting story ends with "an all-piercing, sustained scream--clearly coming from a small, female child." Rating: 5/5.
In Seymour: An Introduction, Salinger's fictional character, Buddy Glass, claims he wrote this story and several others in Nine Stories. Kurt Vonnegut has called each of these stories a "home run."
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nine glories
Review: What is the opposite of "prolific"? Answer: J.D. Salinger. The reclusive author has a rather meager output compared with other writers of his stature, but the extraordinary quality of his work has assured his exalted place in American letters. Though I was impressed by "Catcher in the Rye," I found it to be a bit overrated. (I intend to reread it someday to see if I'm really willing to stand by that statement.) For me, it is the short fiction in this volume that truly reveals his talent. Salinger often uses the uncomprehending bewilderment of children as a vehicle for observing the disappointments of adults.
Two of my favorites are "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (a young man, psychically wounded by WWII and deeply disappointed by the human race, makes a startling choice) and "The Laughing Man" (though typically not very concerned with plot in his stories, Salinger here concocts a crackling adventure tale worthy of the best pulp yarns that doubles as the vehicle for revealing the deep romantic disappointment of an imaginative young man). This is must reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Catcher in the Rye" was better
Review: "Catcher in the Rye" is one of my favourite novels of all time, and after my second reading of it, I decided to move on to reading J.D. Salinger's other works, assuming that I would also enjoy these. Unfortunately, "Nine Stories" is no "Catcher in the Rye" and I was sorely disappointed.
As the title suggests, "Nine Stories" comprises nine short stories, most of which were originally published in "The New Yorker" in the years following the publication of "Catcher in the Rye". Just as "Catcher in the Rye" is a character driven novel with very little in the way of plot or action, so too are these stories. Each story is essentially a vignette about a single character (often without a satisfactory conclusion). However, unlike in the case of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of "Catcher", I found myself not caring at all about any of these characters and in fact, after about the seventh story, I found they all sounded more or less the same, too. I read somewhere that Holden Caulfield was meant to be J.D. Salinger as a boy. Perhaps Salinger is one of those authors who is incapable of inhabiting any character other than himself. That's what I felt to be true after reading this.
The book was not a complete write-off for me. I did enjoy the eighth story, "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period", a story about a young man who takes a job at a correspondence art school in Canada and falls in love with his star pupil, who happens to be a nun; and I was interested in the appearances of Seymour, and Boo Boo, two members of Salinger's Glass family, who are essentially the inspiration for "The Royal Tennenbaums" (the Glass family also appear in Salinger's other works, "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, and Seymour" and "Frannie and Zooey"). However, if given the choice, I would rather read "Catcher in the Rye" a third time than read this book again.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nine Stories
Review: It's only in the last couple of years that I've started reading J. D. Salinger but he has quickly earned a spot among my favorite authors. I enjoy his realistic and oft-times mundane characters.
Nine Stories is just that, nine short stories. Nothing earth shattering happens in any of them and yet they are all very enjoyable. They are character studies and brief glimpses into the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The nine stories are:
* "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
* "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
* "Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
* "The Laughing Man"
* "Down at the Dinghy"
* "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor"
* "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
* "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
* "Teddy"
It takes a while for each story to explain its title and part of the fun is the sousing out of their meanings. The Laughing Man makes a reappearance from the quote by narrator Holden in Catcher in Rye. Here though the Laughing Man is a mythic figure, disfigured by strange circumstances and the source of inspiration for a bus full of boys.
If I had to pick a favorite, I'd have to go with "Down at the Dinghy." The young girl admiral reminds me so much of myself at that age except I think she has more spunk than I did.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Better than Catcher in the Rye...
Review: I'm not a fan of Salinger's putative magnum opus, so it was with some ambivalence that I tackled this compendium of short stories. The verdict, I'm pleased and surprised to relate, is "Bravo!"
Salinger is a damned good writer--brilliant, even. (I didn't think that before.) The stories are similar in style, but unique in plot, keeping the reader familiarized but enraptured...and never sure where Salinger will end up going. In hindsight, I thought the best story was "Teddy," though there is not a single dud in the lot. ("Teddy" starts out prosaically, then veers into profundity before the reader can grasp the inflection point.)
For fellow Salinger-skeptics, underwhelmed by Catcher in the Rye, and wanting to see what all the fuss is about, this may be the book that provides an inkling.
Review Summary: Salinger Hits Nine Home Runs.
Review: Published after The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories is quintessential Salinger. Having first read Salinger's collection of Nine Stories as a college student, these short stories have remained in my thoughts for years.
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (first published in the The New Yorker, January 31, 1948) tells the story of war veteran Seymour Glass, who commits suicide while on his honeymoon with his wife, Muriel, in Florida. While Muriel discusses fashion with her mother at the hotel bar, suicidal Seymour sits on the beach with an innocent young girl, Sybil, who becomes fascinated with him. Rating: A perfect 5/5.
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" (first published in the The New Yorker, March 20, 1948) tells the story of suburban housewife, Eloise, still haunted by the death of Walt Glass, who was killed in an explosion during the war. As suggested by the subtle sideways glance of a drunken friend, Eloise has never recovered from Walt's death. This is a story as relevant today as when it was first published sixty years ago. Rating: 5/5.
"Just Before the War with the Eskimos" (first published in The New Yorker, June 5, 1948) tells the story of two high school classmates, Ginnie Mannox and Selena Graff, in a dispute over money. Ginnie and Selena play tennis together every Saturday, but Selena never offers to pay for their cab. When Ginnie confronts her, Selena explains, "It may interest you to know . . . that my mother is very ill." After meeting Selena's brother Franklin (who offers Ginnie half of his chicken sandwich) and his friend Eric at Selena's apartment, Ginnie has a sudden change of heart about the cab fare. Rating: 5/5.
"The Laughing Man" (first published in The New Yorker, March 19, 1949) tells a story within a story about a nine-year-old, who (along with his fellow "Comanches") would spend afternoons with "the Chief" (a Staten Island law student). At the end of each day, the Chief would tell them a new chapter in his on-going serial about a deformed criminal, which ultimately becomes the story of his doomed relationship with his summer girlfriend. Rating: 5/5.
"Down at the Dinghy" tells the story of Boo Boo Glass's peculiar young son, Lionel, who overhears a house servant, Sandra, refer to his father as a "big sloppy kike." Rating: 5/5.
"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" (first published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950) tells the story of Army Sergeant X (Buddy Glass?), who reminisces over a young girl, Esmé, who helped him to endure the squalor of WWII. He promises to correspond with Esmé and to write a story in her honor, but then suffers an emotional breakdown. This story becomes Sergeant X's recovery. Rating: 5/5.
"Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" tells the story of two lawyers, in which one is distracted from a romantic evening with his love interest by his friend's midnight phone call about his missing wife. His troublesome wife, we learn, has failed to return home from a party. Rating: 5/5.
"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" tells the humorous story of a newly- hired art teacher at a correspondence "art academy," who falls hopelessly in love with a religious painting, the work of his sole pupil (a nun). Rating: 4/5.
"Teddy" (first published in The New Yorker, January 31, 1953) tells the story of a ten-year-old genius, Teddy McArdle. Revealing that he is wise beyond his years, Teddy discusses the very nature of existence with a graduate student, Nicholson, on board an oceanliner. Teddy recalls a previous life in which he was a man in India who was "making very nice spiritual advancement," but stopped praying upon meeting a woman. Teddy envisions his own death by being pushed into the empty pool by his sister. The haunting story ends with "an all-piercing, sustained scream--clearly coming from a small, female child." Rating: 5/5.
In Seymour: An Introduction, Salinger's fictional character, Buddy Glass, claims he wrote this story and several others in Nine Stories. Kurt Vonnegut has called each of these stories a "home run."
G. Merritt
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nine glories
Review: What is the opposite of "prolific"? Answer: J.D. Salinger. The reclusive author has a rather meager output compared with other writers of his stature, but the extraordinary quality of his work has assured his exalted place in American letters. Though I was impressed by "Catcher in the Rye," I found it to be a bit overrated. (I intend to reread it someday to see if I'm really willing to stand by that statement.) For me, it is the short fiction in this volume that truly reveals his talent. Salinger often uses the uncomprehending bewilderment of children as a vehicle for observing the disappointments of adults.
Two of my favorites are "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (a young man, psychically wounded by WWII and deeply disappointed by the human race, makes a startling choice) and "The Laughing Man" (though typically not very concerned with plot in his stories, Salinger here concocts a crackling adventure tale worthy of the best pulp yarns that doubles as the vehicle for revealing the deep romantic disappointment of an imaginative young man). This is must reading.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "Catcher in the Rye" was better
Review: "Catcher in the Rye" is one of my favourite novels of all time, and after my second reading of it, I decided to move on to reading J.D. Salinger's other works, assuming that I would also enjoy these. Unfortunately, "Nine Stories" is no "Catcher in the Rye" and I was sorely disappointed.
As the title suggests, "Nine Stories" comprises nine short stories, most of which were originally published in "The New Yorker" in the years following the publication of "Catcher in the Rye". Just as "Catcher in the Rye" is a character driven novel with very little in the way of plot or action, so too are these stories. Each story is essentially a vignette about a single character (often without a satisfactory conclusion). However, unlike in the case of Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of "Catcher", I found myself not caring at all about any of these characters and in fact, after about the seventh story, I found they all sounded more or less the same, too. I read somewhere that Holden Caulfield was meant to be J.D. Salinger as a boy. Perhaps Salinger is one of those authors who is incapable of inhabiting any character other than himself. That's what I felt to be true after reading this.
The book was not a complete write-off for me. I did enjoy the eighth story, "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period", a story about a young man who takes a job at a correspondence art school in Canada and falls in love with his star pupil, who happens to be a nun; and I was interested in the appearances of Seymour, and Boo Boo, two members of Salinger's Glass family, who are essentially the inspiration for "The Royal Tennenbaums" (the Glass family also appear in Salinger's other works, "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, and Seymour" and "Frannie and Zooey"). However, if given the choice, I would rather read "Catcher in the Rye" a third time than read this book again.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Nine Stories
Review: It's only in the last couple of years that I've started reading J. D. Salinger but he has quickly earned a spot among my favorite authors. I enjoy his realistic and oft-times mundane characters.
Nine Stories is just that, nine short stories. Nothing earth shattering happens in any of them and yet they are all very enjoyable. They are character studies and brief glimpses into the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The nine stories are:
* "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
* "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
* "Just Before the War with the Eskimos"
* "The Laughing Man"
* "Down at the Dinghy"
* "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor"
* "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes"
* "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period"
* "Teddy"
It takes a while for each story to explain its title and part of the fun is the sousing out of their meanings. The Laughing Man makes a reappearance from the quote by narrator Holden in Catcher in Rye. Here though the Laughing Man is a mythic figure, disfigured by strange circumstances and the source of inspiration for a bus full of boys.
If I had to pick a favorite, I'd have to go with "Down at the Dinghy." The young girl admiral reminds me so much of myself at that age except I think she has more spunk than I did.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Better than Catcher in the Rye...
Review: I'm not a fan of Salinger's putative magnum opus, so it was with some ambivalence that I tackled this compendium of short stories. The verdict, I'm pleased and surprised to relate, is "Bravo!"
Salinger is a damned good writer--brilliant, even. (I didn't think that before.) The stories are similar in style, but unique in plot, keeping the reader familiarized but enraptured...and never sure where Salinger will end up going. In hindsight, I thought the best story was "Teddy," though there is not a single dud in the lot. ("Teddy" starts out prosaically, then veers into profundity before the reader can grasp the inflection point.)
For fellow Salinger-skeptics, underwhelmed by Catcher in the Rye, and wanting to see what all the fuss is about, this may be the book that provides an inkling.