When I first encountered J.D. Salinger’s work as an adolescent, I was most impressed and often identified with the privileged voice of middle-class dread—all of the accoutrements and none of the shows of happiness. Later, Salinger’s uncanny abilities as a writer came to impress me most. He is amazingly skillful at making his narratives dense with layers of meaning. This one, for example, works fine at its most obvious level (almost too obvious!), a caustic lampoon of empty suburban ways of life. But there is much more going on here, and the details tell. Two 30something women are getting together for a catch-up. They drink the afternoon away, bemoaning their present lives and reminiscing about college days when they first met. Both were dropouts within the year. Eloise gripes about her husband and waxes nostalgic about a boyfriend named Walt. In what may be a retcon, which I don’t think is exactly Salinger’s style, Salinger later said it’s Walt Glass—another member of the Glass family, yes. To me Walt is the most important part of this story, not because he is a Glass but because he died in the war. I am starting to sense, for the first time, how significantly Salinger’s experience in the war as a combat soldier affected him and reverberates out in his work. War experience is also a main point in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (he does favor some long and silly titles, doesn’t he?). Seymour was plainly overwhelmed by the war. Walt died of it. Eloise loved him and misses him keenly, but there’s little room in her upscale life now for grief, especially not all these years later married to another man. Her friend, Mary Jane, is not much better off—divorced, a career woman in 1948—too late for the war years, too early for women’s liberation, her life is just as narrow and constricted as Eloise’s. “Uncle Wiggily” is a nickname Walt had for Eloise after she sprained her ankle. Now she lives in Connecticut, miserable and drinking herself into stupors regularly. She’s also awful to everyone around her, including her husband, daughter, and maid. Eloise and Mary Jane are not close friends. It’s not even clear they like each other much. They close the visit as evening comes down, passed out. Mary Jane was over two hours late, claiming she got lost. In fairness, I often get lost in the suburbs myself. But that’s partly because I have a seething resentment of the suburbs that distracts me. That’s the kind of dynamics on display between these two, profound and unprocessed disappointment and regrets, all surmised from dialogue and the scene-setting.
J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
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