2 posts tagged “j.d. salinger”
Here are my synopses and comments on the second half of The Uncollected Works of J.D. Salinger. The post concerning the other eleven stories can be found here. I spoil the endings of quite a few of them, so tread lightly if you think you're going to track the stories down and read them.
Soft Boiled Sergeant (Saturday Evening Post, April, 1944)
In this story, a former soldier reminisces about the friendship he had with a staff sergeant named Burke. He looks back on his first days in the military and how Burke's kindness helped ease his transition into the Army. Salinger's main character speaks in an annoying, sloppy English ("pitchers" for "pictures", for example), but the story as a whole is a good one.
The Hang of It (Colliers, July, 1941)
This story is very similar to the one the author published the following year called "Personal Notes of an Infantryman". Both stories feature a twist at the end where we learn the actual relationship between the characters. Neither of these stories did much for me and I'd say they're the least of Salinger's works.
The Heart of a Broken Story (Esquire, September, 1941)
"The Heart of a Broken Story" starts out as your typical boy-meets-girl story, but the author interrupts things a few paragraphs in and addresses the reader directly.
The world needs boy-meets-girl stories. But to write one, unfortunately, the writer must go about the business of having the boy meet the girl. I couldn't do it with this one. Not and have it make sense.
Then he explains all the reasons why the story would never work. He offers some potential ways to get the boy to meet the girl, but dismisses them all as foolish or unrealistic. The boy doesn't chat her up on the bus. He doesn't steal the girl's purse in a desperate attempt to meet her. He doesn't get sent to jail where he strikes up a relationship with the girl based on letters. He doesn't get shot in the back trying to escape. None of this happens. They never meet. The end.
The Inverted Forest (Cosmopolitan, December, 1947)
This story is about a girl named Corinne von Nordhoffen who invites a boy named Ray Ford to her 11th birthday party. The boy doesn't show up, so Corinne and her father's secretary go looking for him. They find the boy and his mother unexpectedly moving out of town.
Nineteen years go by. Corinne now works at a magazine; Ray is a famous poet. Corinne calls Ray on the telephone and the couple start to see a lot of each other. Things are going well until one of Ray's female admirers arrives in town with an endless supply of lies and charm. The girl's name is Bunny, so you know there's going to be trouble.
Most of the uncollected stories are 3-5 pages in length; "The Inverted Forest" is over 25. It's definitely worth tracking down.
The Long Debut of Lois Taggett (Story, September-October, 1942)
Lois Taggett has a coming-out party. She then gets a job as a receptionist but leaves after eleven days to go on a cruise to Rio. She marries a handsome man who turns out to be demented. They get a divorce and Lois marries a man who always wears white socks. They have a baby. It dies.
The Stranger (Colliers, December, 1945)
"The Stranger" is another good one. It features Babe Gladwaller and his sister Matilda, the characters from "A Boy in France" and "Last Day of the Last Furlough". In the latter of those stories, Babe and his friend Vincent Caulfield are about to ship overseas. In "The Stranger", Babe is out of the service and Vincent is dead. Babe and Mattie stop by Vincent's ex-girlfriend's apartment to tell her the circumstances surrounding his death in combat.
"The Stranger" features one of my favorite lines from the uncollected stories:
There was never a way, even back in the beginning, that a man could condition himself against the lethal size and shape and melody of beauty by chance.
The Varioni Brothers (Saturday Evening Post, July, 1943)
The Varioni brothers are a songwriting team along the lines of George and Ira Gershwin. Sonny Varioni writes the music; Joe Varioni writes the lyrics. Before he became a lyricist, Joe was a promising novelist. The songwriting kept him from realizing his potential in that field. Years after Joe's death, Sonny finds the pieces of his brother's novel and vows to put it together and have it published.
The Young Folks (Story, March-April, 1940)
This was J.D. Salinger's first published story. It's about young people interacting at a party.
This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise (Esquire, October, 1945)
This is another story featuring Vincent Caulfield. In this one, he sits inside a military transport truck waiting to go to a dance with a large group of soldiers. There are four too many soldiers, and it's up to Vincent to get the extras out of the truck. He talks with the soldiers and tries to solve his personnel problem, but his mind is really on his younger brother Holden who is missing-in-action.
Blue Melody (Cosmopolitan, September, 1948)
As it says at the beginning of the story, this one's about a singer named Lida Louise, "who sang the blues as they have never been sung before or since."
Hapworth 16, 1924 (The New Yorker, June, 1965)
"Hapworth 16, 1924" was Salinger's last published work. It takes the form of a long letter written by the absurdly precocious seven-year-old Seymour Glass. He's away at summer camp with his younger brother Buddy. The letter reveals that Seymour can predict the future, shut off his body's pain receptors, and remember specifics from his previous lives. It's also noteworthy in that it features the list of reading materials Seymour would like sent to camp (including the complete works of Tolstoy, Proust, and any volumes dealing with "human whirling or spinning"). He's a strange boy, that Seymour.
"Hapworth 16, 1924" is the missing piece in Salinger's Glass family saga and worth searching out for those interested in the complete picture of one of literature's most enchanting families. I doubt it would be of any interest to readers unfamiliar with Salinger's two Glass books and the Glass-related tales from Nine Stories.
I used to spend a lot of time in libraries poring through old issues of The New Yorker and Saturday Evening Post in search of J.D. Salinger's uncollected stories. These are the 22 stories the author published and then let disappear from circulation. A few of them were anthologized, but none of them were readily available at the time of my search. My hunt through the stacks was time-consuming and frustrating as many of the stories had been ripped out of the magazines by less scrupulous readers. I eventually tracked them all down. The strange thing is that once the search was over, I didn't even bother to read many of the stories. I put them in a trunk where they remained for over a decade. I recently rediscovered the stories and decided to read them all (many for the first time). Here are brief synopses and comments on the first 11 stories:
A Boy in France (Saturday Evening Post, March, 1945)
An American soldier tries to make an abandoned foxhole comfortable for the night. He cleans it up, arranges his blankets, and then rereads a letter from his little sister.
A Girl I Knew (Good Housekeeping, February, 1948)
This is one of my favorites of the uncollected stories. In it, a college flunk-out heads to Europe to learn languages. He befriends a Jewish girl in Vienna. He speaks to her in his meager German; she speaks to him in something resembling English. Their language skills are limited, so they basically have the same conversation over and over again each time they meet. World War II comes and goes. The young man returns to Vienna to track down his friend.
A Young Girl in 1941 With No Waist At All (Mademoiselle, May, 1947)
A young girl (with no waist at all, apparently) is on a cruise to Cuba with her fiance's mother. She meets an employee of the cruise ship and they spend a night living it up in Havana. She tries to forget that she'll soon be married; he tries to forget he'll soon be in the Army.
Both Parties Concerned (Saturday Evening Post, May, 1947)
This story features a young married couple out on the town. The wife is in a bad mood because she'd rather be at home with their baby. The husband, who appears to be some sort of yokel, would rather drink beer. This is one that should probably stay uncollected. Salinger's dialogue isn't up to his usual standards.
Elaine (Story, March-April, 1945)
"Elaine" tells the story of a girl who graduates elementary school at the age of 16. Her father died when she was young and her mother spends most of her time at the movies. Elaine leads a sheltered life until a boy named Teddy Schmidt invites her on a trip to the beach. This story features a wonderful first line, but it goes downhill from there.
Go See Eddie (Kansas Review, December, 1940)
As the title would suggest, this story is about a man who keeps telling his sister to go see a guy named "Eddie". This is one of the earliest stories in the collection. I could tell while reading it that it was an early effort.
I'm Crazy (Colliers, December, 1945)
"I'm Crazy" is essentially an early version of the second chapter from The Catcher in the Rye (it also has parts of chapters 1 and 21 in it). Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of school, but goes to visit Mr. Spencer, his history teacher, on his way out of town. Mr. Spencer reads Holden's feeble essay on the Egyptians and they talk about flunking out and the grippe. Holden heads home and sneaks up to his sisters' room. He talks with Phoebe and a second younger sister named Viola. The parents arrive home to find Holden there. After the yelling, Holden goes back to his sisters' room where he watches Phoebe sleep and then lines up a row of olives on the railing of Viola's crib. The little girl likes olives.
Last Day of the Last Furlough (Saturday Evening Post, July, 1944)
This story features a soldier named Babe Gladwaller and his younger sister, Matilda. I believe they're the same characters from the story "A Boy in France". Babe's friend and fellow soldier Vincent Caulfield comes over to the house to spend the last day of the furlough with Babe and his family. Vincent talks about how his younger brother Holden has gone missing. Babe's father tells some WWI stories at the dinner table and Babe tries to figure out how to tell his family he's gotten his orders to ship overseas. This is definitely one of the best of the uncollected stories.
Once a Week Won't Kill You (Story, November-December, 1944)
This is another one of Salinger's stories about soldiers just about to head off to service in WWII. It features one of my favorite lines in all of The Uncollected Works of J.D. Salinger:
It had been three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics.
The story is about a soldier who tries to convince his wife (of the italics) that she should take his aunt to the movies once a week while he's away.
Personal Notes of an Infantryman (Colliers, December 12, 1942)
In this one, an older man tries to enlist in the military. It's got a bit of a twist at the end. Even with the twist, it isn't much of a story. It probably would've been better without the twist.
Slight Rebellion Off Madison (The New Yorker, December, 1946)
"Slight Rebellion Off Madison" has Holden Caulfied on Christmas break from Pencey Prep. He calls up Sally Hayes and they go out on a date. Holden has an existential crisis of sorts and suggests to Sally that they should run away and get married. After their date has ended, Holden goes to a bar and gets drunk. He calls Sally a couple times in the middle of the night to let her know he'd like to come over to help trim the tree on Christmas Eve. Then he dips his head into a sinkful of water in the bar bathroom.
If you're interested in reading "Slight Rebellion Off Madison", it's now available in a collection called Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. I believe it's the only one of the 22 stories currently in print.
