Well for starters, the one thing I mainly remember talking about during class discussions relating to De Daumier Smith's Blue Period was how Salinger was pointing out the flaws directly within society by mocking them and jeering through the main character's hypocritical characteristics ( an example would be like this sense of false nationalism in france).  Well, throughout the story of Teddy, the main course of the novel was the discussion of Teddy's point of view on religion and beliefs.  My main dilema is, was Salinger being genuinely sincere when discussing Teddy's point off view or was he subliminally mocking Buddhism as a whole?  Also, why would nine stories end with this novel and why would they final quote of the short story and novel as a whole, "He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream clearly coming from a small, female child.  It was highly acoustical, as though it was reverberating within four tiled walls" (198).   (small book)

Teddy! Comforting or Sarcastic?

So to me and probably many other people the word "Teddy" is comforting because of its nickname for Teddy Bear. In the story Teddy, Salinger gave the main character the nickname Teddy and named the story Teddy as well. I'm wondering if the kid Teddy should be seen as comforting in the beginning and middle of the story when he is with his parents and talking about religion and his beliefs with Nicholson, or if Salinger is using the word sarcastically. Teddy could be seen as helping Nicholson and his parents during their talks, but he also can be seen as annoying and slightly brainwashing them. By the end of the story Teddy kind of seems scary which gives evidence to Salinger using his sarcastic side.

What do you guys think? Is Teddy used as a comfort word in the story, or is Salinger giving it a new connotation?

-Shira

Religious beliefs of Salinger

Something I found interesting about "Teddy" was the mention of the "Vedantic theory of reincarnation". Salinger, himself, was raised by a parent who was Jewish and a parent who was Catholic (Like Holden). Later as an adult, Salinger dabbled in in Scientology, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Buddhism is mentioned in "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" when Jean mentions it to M. Yoshoto. The "Experience" Jean has could be a sort of Buddhist awakening or enlightenment.

Most prominently, Hinduism and the Vedantic theory are major motifs in "Teddy". Does anyone think Salinger was speaking through Teddy expressing his religious beliefs? And are there any more examples of any of Salinger's religious beliefs in Nine Stories?

De Daumier-Smith's Experience

In the handout, "What is The Sound of One Hand Clapping?", the last paragraph says that "the meaning of a koan can only be demonstrated in a live experience..."  In "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period", the narrator sees a girl in a shop changing the truss on a wooden dummy.  The girl falls on her bottom and the narrator says, "It was just then that I had my Experience" (250).  The narrator is a (supposed) student of Buddhism, which proves that this "Experience" is when he comes to an understanding of a koan.  I was wondering if the koan in the beginning of Nine Stories (what is the sound of one hand clapping) is the same koan that Jean De Daumier-Smith now understands, and if the narrator's statement of "Everybody is a nun" (251) is his own, new koan for the readers to have to experience.

P.S. Does this make any sense?  (Unlike Jean De Daumier-Smith, I unfortunately can't even attempt to explain my thoughts in any other language as I'm accustomed to writing most things in English, and not French.)

Misunderstood Melodrama

I have noticed that in almost all of Salinger's short stories in this collection, there is at least one character who is  overtly melodramatic. In "Uncle Wiggily" Walt appears to be a over-dramatic when he says he should have his hand shoved through the glass window of the train. Eloise is also a very dramatic character and complains about the tribulations of her life even though it is quite lavish and comfortable. In "Eskimos", Selena's brother is extremely dramatic about the small cut on his finger saying "this has been the most horrible morning of my entire life" (75).  In "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes<" Arthur has dis-proportionatley dramatic reactions to his wife's late return home and the possibility of her affair. Both Ésme and X are fairly dramatic in their relations to one and other. In addition, Jean De Daumier-Smith is an exceptionally dramatic character (especially in his obsession with Sister Irma. Do you think this is some sort of satire on the melodrama of the times? It could also be to point out emotional pain through ostentatious complaining about trivial physical pain. Why else might Salinger decide to include one of these histrionic characters in each of his stories?

-Becca

Everybody is a Nun

The ending of De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period confused me. We did discuss in class why J.D.S. might have had such a strange epiphany, but I never fully understood how the realizatoin affected his decision to leave Sister Irma alone. J.D.S's journal entry states (in French), "I am giving Sister Irma her freedom to follow her own destiny. Eveybody is a nun" (251). The first sentence makes is seem like J.D.S. thought he had control over Sister Irma's destiny, which is obviously arrogant for him to think. I wonder, though, how the two concepts (of controlling another's destiny and everyone being a nun) connect, and how this led to J.D.S's ultimate decision to stop obsessing over Sister Irma. Thoughts?

Julianne

Ankles

While reading Teddy, I noticed that Salinger repeatedly mentions ankles once again through out this story, on pages 253 and 279. This occurrence can be related to A Perfect Day for Bananafish when Seymour grabs Sybil's ankles. Also, ankles are mentioned in Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut when Eloise crosses her legs at her ankles and when Eloise pulls Ramona to the center of her bed by her ankles. In For Esme - With Love and Squalor, the narrator mentions Esme's ankles twice, as well. I think that this definitely has a significant meaning in order to mention such a minute detail in so many different works.

Favorite Lines From De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period

"In one month alone, according to my diary of 1939, I completed eighteen oil paintings. Noteworthily enough, seventeen of them were self-portraits" (133).

"One week in May of 1939, about ten months after Bobby and I checked into the Ritz, I saw in a Quebec newspaper (one of sixteen French-Language newspapers and periodicals I had blown myself a subscription to)..." (133).
I love how he wants to stay connected with France even though he is originally from New York.

"My classmates seemed, for the first time, like a fairly decent bunch" (135)

"I think it's the sweetest, most complimentary thing I ever heard in my life,' Mrs. X said warmly to me. Her eyes sparkled with depravity." (138)
I like how he says she is morally corrupted..yet responds warmly.

"Also please do not forget to inform me if you have a reasonable command of the French language, as for all intents and purposes I am comparatively speechless in English owing to my varied and largely insensible upbringing" (155).
I doubt a woman who had only one year of high school is especially fluent in French. Also, it was silly that he said he was "comparatively speechless in English" after writing a long letter and very long P.S.

If you want, add your favorite quotes from this story or others that we've read.

-Luisa Lestz

Mondegreen

"Mondegreen" by Yeasayer. Thoughts? (The lyrics are below)

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Tune in, tune in, tune in, tune in

I just can't justify your love

I'm just too scared to watch tv
Cause in the glass, static's all I see
Melted faces
And in the mirror speaking tongues
As I hear a siren travelin' by
I can't wake up, I try and I try

Everybody sugar in my bed
Everybody clouds up in my head
Everybody disastrous
Everybody all after us
Everybody everybody everybody everybody...

Everybody's talkin' 'bout me and my baby
Makin' love til the mornin' light
Makin' love til the mornin' mornin' light
Makin' love til the mornin'

1, 2, 3, 4
5, 6; 5, 6
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
5, 6; 5, 6
1, 2, 3, 4

I just can't justify my thoughts
Draw symbols on the carpted parking lots
Perhaps the pollen in the air
Turns into a stapler
Poppin' pills to stay awake
But all them pills make me shake
Shiver shout and run about
But all the time I want to cry out

Everybody sugar in my bed
Everybody clouds up in my head
Everybody disastrous
Everybody all after us
Everybody everybody everybody everybody...

Everybody's talkin' 'bout me and my baby
Makin' love til the mornin' light
Makin' love til the mornin' mornin' light
Makin' love til the mornin'

Be my sunshine
When the dark clouds rumble
And together we can
Try to avoid trouble
And we'll run to somewhere
Where the grass grows greener
And the water's clearer
And our blood flows cleaner

Experimenting with Embedding an MP3: Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers' "Bananafish Revolution"

Unfortunately, Blogger doesn't easily allow you to upload/embed MP3 files. I've found a way to do so, but it's a convoluted process. If you do have a music file you'd like to post, talk to me.

Critic's piece on Salinger

Shortly after Salinger's death The New York Times published an article about his life and his books. This is what they had to say about Nine Stories.

Many critics were more admiring of “Nine Stories,” which came out in 1953 and helped shape writers like Mr. Roth, John Updike and Harold Brodkey. The stories were remarkable for their sharp social observation, their pitch-perfect dialogue (Mr. Salinger, who used italics almost as a form of musical notation, was a master not of literary speech but of speech as people actually spoke it) and the way they demolished whatever was left of the traditional architecture of the short story — the old structure of beginning, middle, end — for an architecture of emotion, in which a story could turn on a tiny alteration of mood or irony. Mr. Updike said he admired “that open-ended Zen quality they have, the way they don’t snap shut.”


I completely agree that Salinger had an amazing quality in dialogue between his characters, but am not sure about the "Zen" qualities. I understand some stories are left open-ended and don't "snap shut", but I think saying Nine Stories has a Zen quality is pushing it. If anything, I am upset after reading stories in Nine Stories, and certainly do not have a peaceful Zen feeling. 

-Shira 

Address Significance throughout 9 stories

While reading Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes I noticed that the narrator referred to both the girl that Lee was in bed with and Arthur's promiscuous wife, Joanie, as "girl". This reminded me of the Beginning of Bananafish where the narrator refers to Seymour's wife, Muriel, as "the girl". I fid it interesting that Salinger has the narrator address the women as "girls" rather than "ladies" or "women" etc. It could have something to do with youth and innocence which are motifs omnipresent throughout all of Salinger's stories. I find it interesting, however, that none of these three women are "innocent" by conventional means, at least not in terms of promiscuity. Muriel reads sex articles in a magazine during Bananafish, Lee's "girl" is in bed with an older man, and Arthur's wife is notorious for sleeping around. Why do you think that, given these character traits, Salinger still decides to address the women as "girl"'s?
-Becca

Bananafish Connections

From the new One Direction music video. Reminded me of Bananafish! :)

Children Connections

While Lydia brought this up briefly in her post, I was really struck by the similarity in child/protagonist relationships in Esme and Bananafish. There is the innocence piece that Lydia brought up but also the fact that both relationships are oddly intimate for an adult and child. There is the scene in Bananafish where Seymour kisses Sybil's foot and also the scene where he says "How that name comes up. mixing memory and desire (18)." The relationship between Esme and Sergeant X closely mirrors that of Sybil and Seymour and X seems oddly infatuated with her. There is also the same foot fetish in this story as in bananafish. On pages 153-154 Sergeant X observes"It was a pretty little execution, for she was wearing white socks and her ankles and feet were lovely." These are not the only to stories where feet/ankles are referenced. Why do you suppose Salinger keeps referencing these particular appendages as opposed to other parts of the body? Thoughts?

Salinger's War Stories

My dad told a couple days ago that Salinger was in World War II. I've been wondering if he is showing part of himself to the reader. I found an article about his service and thought one section related perfectly to what we just read.

"Shortly after the close of hostilities, Salinger suffered a post traumatic stress induced nervous breakdown and was hospitalized...It is thought that his profound short story "For Esme with Live and Squalor," written around a character who was a broken soldier, came from firsthand experience."

Read more at Suite101: The Military Service of JD Salinger: Catcher in the Rye Author in World War Two | Suite101.com 

Maybe the twitches that the narrator had are similar to the problems that Salinger had.

~Luisa 

A perfect day for a movie....

Faculties

I've found that throughout all of Salinger's stories the last sentence sheds the most light on the situation. In "For Esme--With Love and Squalor," the ending sentence is: "You take a sleepy man, Esme, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac--with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact" (173). This sentence first appeared right before the "squalid" part of the story when Esme says: "I hope you return from the war with all your faculties intact" (156).

The idea of having all your faculties is an interesting one, and one that occurs in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." Specifically, "Bananafish" highlights the lack of faculties in Seymour. Seymour resembles Sergeant X shortly before he gets Esme's letter. He isn't in control of himself, he can't deal with the outside world as a capable adult; in short, he's going insane. Seymour demonstrates one of the potential ways Sergeant X could have gone if Esme's letter had not pulled him out of his rut. The idea of losing one's faculties, of losing control of your life, is repeated in both short stories.

"Uncle Wiggily" Movie

The only JD Salinger book/short story to ever be made into a move is "Uncle Wiggily". They called it My Foolish Heart and it was supposedly so terrible that JD Salinger decided he would never allow one of his works to be made into a movie again.

Here's a review:
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C05E1DF173EEF3BBC4851DFB766838B649EDE

Connections.....

As soon as I started reading Esmé, I immediately connected it to A Perfect Day for Bananafish. I think that both short stories have glaring similarities as well as some less obvious ones.

First of all, there's the obvious connection between the wars. Both Seymour and "Staff Sergeant X" have been emotionally and mentally changed by their experiences in the war. They are both extremely mentally unstable, yet people treat them like they are perfectly fine. I can't decide whether or not treating them like nothing's wrong is good for them or not. Muriel and Corporal Z act like nothing's wrong even though they know that something really is. Muriel keeps defending Seymour and dodging her mother's questions about him. She says during their conversation: "'Mother, you talk about him as though he were a raving maniac-'" (9). Muriel's mother is terrified that something is terribly wrong with Seymour, but Muriel acts as though nothing is wrong. Corporal Z continues to have a normal conversation with Sergeant X, even though there are glaringly obvious signs that this is not a normal conversation. The first clue is when Corporal Z enters the room and Sergeant X says to him: "to be careful not to step on the dog"(107). There is no dog on the floor except the one in the sergeant's head. However, Corporal Z continues as though nothing is wrong. Why do Muriel and the Corporal treat them like this?

I also think that both Seymour and the Staff Sergeant connect oddly well with children. Although Sybil is much more of a child than Esmé is, there is still that connection with the soldier and the child. I think that this goes back to the ongoing Salinger theme of innocence. Seymour and Sergeant X connect so well to children because the children remind them of their earlier days when they were innocent. However, Seymour connects with Sybil after he has been unhinged by the war. Sergeant X connects with Esmé before he's been changed by his experiences in the war.

Seymour Glass, See More Glass

I wanted to make a new post because something from "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" caught my eye, and no one mentioned it in class.

On page 14, Sybil is introduced. "'See more glass,' said Sybil Carpenter, who was staying at the hotel with her mother. 'Did you see more glass?'" (14) We all know that Sybil wanted to see Seymour Glass, and that even though the question above isn't what Sybil meant to say, it still makes sense as a stand alone sentence.  However, if you spell Seymour's name correctly, the question becomes, "Did you Seymour Glass?"  It doesn't make any sense as there is a missing verb.  I thought the way Salinger wrote this question was interesting.  Once again, the author shows the naivety and innocence of Sybil.  For Seymour, the sentence can refer to him being a piece of glass.  Glass is fragile, much like Seymour's mental state.

Also, I think it interesting that Seymour was on a beach, which is the place a person would go to find sea glass.  Seymour is like a broken piece of sea glass because he's broken (, figuratively,) and he recently came back from the war just as a broken piece of sea glass gets washed ashore.  (Both Seymour and the sea glass arrive in different places where they aren't in their best state.)

A Perfect Day for Matching!

Way to represent, men...

Eloise sobbing?

Why did Eloise sob at the end of "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut"?

In the Age of the Internet, Taking Solace in Salinger's Stories

Here's a great article I came across--it was published shortly after Salinger's death (in February of 2010). Thoughts? 

Salinger in the Twitter Age

Similarities between the book and song

While listening to the song I found a few physical similarities that help the song relate to the book better. First, I think "all this yellow I'm seeing" in the song relates to Seymour and his first signs of illness. Not knowing the color is the first hint that he is not 100% okay in the book, and I think he tries to cover up his misreading of simple colors. In the song, talking about the yellow can relate to the bathing suit and also the yellow color of bananas or Bananafish.
Next, in the song saying "she'll be alright like she always is, she'll go and buy herself a brand dress" reminds me of how Muriel tells her mom she's fine over and over on the phone, and how she was so materialistic at the beginning of the book with her Saks blouse and nail polish.
Lastly, in the song saying, "that piano its the angels calling me home" warns us of Seymour's death in the book. Muriel tells her mom, "He's played the piano both nights we've been here" (Salinger 10). The angels are calling him home to heaven which foreshadows his death in the book.

Do you guys agree with these points?

-Shira

This looks intense...... I think we should watch the movie.

iPad slap

The best new application on the iPad...

Bananafish Revolution: Homework for the Weekend

Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers "Bananafish Revolution" from Palestra Creative on Vimeo.

Listen to this song by Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers. She was asked to write a song inspired by one of Salinger's Nine Stories, and this is what she created.

What does she get right in this song? What does she get wrong? What effect do the lyrics create? Consider the instrumentation and sound of her voice as well. Feel free to bring up other ideas as well.

Create a thread (commenting on each other off of this post), but if you have a completely separate idea about the song, feel free to start a new post.