欧宝娱乐

If kidnappers had snatched up J D Salinger some time in the early 1970s, driven like madmen through the night and the next day too and imprisoned him in a small but pleasant room somewhere near Boise, furnished him with with all mod cons, and told him he wasn't going anyplace soon until he'd finished at the very least another nine stories, and at best three or four complete novels; and if the kidnappers - due to an endearing cocktail of naivete and compassion (because you know they were just literature fans like you and me, not blank-eyed killers, and they weren't entirely convinced about this whole caper to begin with let it be said) let JD go for long walks (to get inspiration, but really to beat on a nearby farmhouse door and call the cops); and if they were then rounded up (not too hard, said the cops) and put on trial - not a jury in the land would have convicted them.
When the prosecution rested and the defence opened, their lawyer would simply have issued a copy of Nine Stories to all 12 jurors and said "Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case."

This is not to say that each of the Nine is such a great golden glowing nugget of controlled power, insight and wisdom (some are) but that the whole is such eloquent proof of the perspicacity, intelligence and all-round humanbeingness of JDS that reading this collection is very bittersweet - how lovely it all is, and how very little of it there is, when duller, pudgier-fingered writers type on, and on, and publish, and publish.
Anyone who has encountered comments by myself on Ye Olde Catcher in Ye Rye will now accuse me of inconsistency, or at least, be expecting me to accuse JDS of the same. How can I hate the novel for its unbearable whine and Johnny-one-note somebody-shut-him-up-please tiresomeness and yet enjoy all the rest of JDS as I do? They're cut from the same cloth, it's not like Picasso's blue period and Picasso the cubist which could have been different guys, or the Velvet Underground's first and third albums which could have been a different band. But I've come across this in different areas of the universe - can't stand Tom Waits until Swordfishtrombones, think he's a genius for three albums, then can't stand him again. Shakespeare's tragedies - oui! Shakespeare's comedies - er, non! So maybe not that unusual.

JDS famously published all his stuff between 1951 and 1963 and then STOPPED. (Which is why the kidnappers pounced, they gave him a good ten year rest and that was ENOUGH to their way of thinking.) And he stopped just as things were getting really interesting. He writes of the murderous conformities of American educated middle-class life and of the outcasts and especially young kids who either subvert this button-down world or bail out swiftly. Just as he stopped publishing things began to change. the 60s began swinging, and the youthquake (as it has been termed) was upon us. Just the very stuff that you might have thought would have fascinated JD. What do the kids do when they try to make their own rules up? I feel the absence of JDS throughout the 60s and 70s, as i feel the absence of another American writer who STOPPED in 1963, Sylvia Plath. I want to know what these two clever clogs would have made of the tumultuous ten years which followed the self-stilling of their voices.

But back to the Nine Stories - and to steal a fellow reviewer's catch-phrase:

Is it a classic?

Answer : Yes. Goddamn!


PS : I realise I also speculated upon the advisability of kidnapping Thomas Bernhard elsewhere but that was to save the world from any further novels like Extinction, whereas the JD Salinger kidnap is for the opposite reason. But I would like to publicly state that I do not condone the imprisonment of any writers for any reasons, so please don't try this at home.