Nine Stories

"See more fish."  If that sentence doesn't bring tears to your eyes, you haven't read J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories, a collection of short stories published in 1948.  It's unfortunate that many people who have read Catcher in the Rye don't read Salinger's other work.  In a way, his relatively small collection of works - Catcher in the Rye, four novelettes (Franny, Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters, and Seymour), and these short stories - can be seen as one larger, integrated work, and not just because of the focus on the Glass family as primary characters.  Thematically, almost all of these works share the same concerns about the loss of innocence and the hypocrisy of modern life (or, as Holden put it, "phonies").

The strongest of these stories contrast the beauty of children not yet spoiled by adult influences - greed, jealousy, and most powerfully, war - with the fragile state of young men trying to endure their initiation to those influences.  In the two most powerful stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme, With Love and Squalor," that initiation was profound - the horrors of World War II.  The protagonists of both stories meet young children who give them a glimpse of the beauty hidden by all the horror they've seen.  For one, that glimpse is enough to keep enduring; for the other, it's a fatal reminder of all he has lost.

Other strong stories: "The Laughing Man," about a young man's fall into adulthood as seen through the eyes of a boy he coaches; "Down at the Dinghy," a seemingly simple story of a mother and son with a heart wrenching twist; and "Teddy," the tale of a 10-year-old wise beyond his years.

If you decide to read all of Salinger, at least read "Bananafish" first.  It is the author's thematic keystone, and perhaps the saddest story in American literature.