“De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” (1952)

In this story by J.D. Salinger we see him carry off—insofar as he does carry it off—a farcical, mostly empty tale, riffing at a hundred miles an hour and nothing to work with. I see on Wikipedia that it was originally published in World Review (London), after the New Yorker rejected it because “the piece was judged too short to adequately address the complex religious concepts.” Complex religious concepts was news to me. It doesn’t strike me as a very serious story. It’s written when the first-person narrator, John Smith, is an adult, looking back on episodes in his youth, particularly involving his stepfather. The family of three departs for Paris after the stock market crash of 1929. They stay in Paris 10 years, during which the mother/wife dies. Back in New York City in 1939 they are trying to make ends meet. Smith is a painter, though not convincing when he talks about it. He did take some art classes in Paris, maybe even got a degree. He sees an ad for a position in Montreal at a correspondence art school. He drops Pablo Picasso’s name all over the place and gets the job. But it’s an absurd job, just part of a fraud operation. One of the students he critiques is a nun and he’s very impressed with her work. He sends her a note of encouragement but, shortly after, the convent withdraws her from the class. This is a kind of blow to him, a crisis. Apparently this is one place where religion is read as an element of the story. But the context is all so absurd and comical I didn’t really recognize it as any kind of religious crisis of faith or whatever. Then, per Wikipedia, Smith has an official Epiphany one night as he is “looking into a display window of an orthopedic appliances store.” This also barely registered on me, I must admit. Because the narrator dedicates the story to his stepfather in the first paragraph, I assumed things were all good between them and that aspect was one of my favorite parts of the story. Wikipedia seems to think otherwise and now I’m not so sure. The classic Salinger voice is wisecracking and perhaps deceptively lighthearted. I know he would get increasingly into profundities about life and religion, not always well-suited but it’s arguable he got better at it, notably as he developed his Glass family. I think this is more of an awkward early attempt and does not work well.

J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
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