Customer Reviews

J.D. Salinger (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)

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"Now behold, one came and said to Him, 'Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?'" -- Matthew 19:16 (NKJV)

Ah, how I wish such plot summaries and character lists had been around when I was assigned to read short stories in high school. It would have saved me lots of time wrestling with making notes, figuring out what I wrote, and connecting the dots.

The book's main limitation is that it only covers six stories:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"
"The Laughing Man"
"For Esme--with Love and Squalor"
"Franny"
"Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters"

For someone who published as little as Salinger did, it seems strange not to include more stories. My guess is that the criticisms of the other stories left even more to be desired than these criticisms do.

Many people don't either "get" or "like" Salinger's stories. Some find them to be too dated (being deeply rooted in their time and mileau rather than attempting to be more timeless and universal) while others don't like his philosophies. Doesn't writing, itself, count for something? These are amazing fictional works that will invade your mind never to leave. The craft behind the language and story telling is immaculate.

These criticisms are mostly superficial in the extreme. I would have never written a book review if such essays had been my model for commenting on writing because I would have been embarrassed to focus on such trivial points. Harold Bloom doesn't seem to like them very much either, noting "The Critical Views excerpted in this volume rarely abound in perceptiveness . . . ."