Salinger’s “Nine Stories”

Suzanna Anderson Creates ♦ August 8, 2011 ♦ Leave a comment

I finished reading J.D. Salinger’s “Nine Stories.” Each one is unique and offers interesting characters and situations.

I especially love it when fiction refers to poetry. Robert Stone does this in “Bear and His Daughter” with the short stories “Porque no Tiene, Porque le Falta” and “Bear and His Daughter.” For some reason it amuses me.

And so it is with “Nine Stories.” In “Teddy,” Teddy says, “Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions” (282). And of artists in general in “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period”: “The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly. However, this is not a tragic situation, in my opinion” (245).