For Esmé with Love and Squalor

Last week I read "For Esmé with Love and Squalor" by J.D. Salinger, from his only short story collection Nine Stories.

I would feel disingenuous if I sat here and said "yeah, it was pretty good." I mean, come on, it's J.D. Salinger. Of course it's good. So I guess I won't be reviewing it as to how good it was or even how good it was as compared to his other works; I'm mostly concerned with what I saw in it.

Fascinating stuff. Can I really call it disjointed though?

It starts with a man writing a letter to another man about to get maried to the titular Esmé. Turns out she might be trouble. Cut to the same guy, years earlier as a green G.I. on leave walks into a tea house in London on the eve of D-Day, 1944. He meets the girl, who is there with her kid brother and her nanny. ("Meet you at the corner!") The tea house scene flirts with being skeevy. She is 14. He's 22 and already married. She promises to write him.

The last part is months later. He has now seen combat and has, in fact, cracked. So much so - and here's what I really liked - so much so, the possibility remains open as to whether or not the first two parts of the story were a mental fabrication, a halucination induced by PTSD. The ending solidifies that - SPOILER ALERT - she was in fact real. But the fact of the matter is, there's no bridge between the PTSD version of our narrator and the one who was going to send the bridegroom a warning by way of the post office.

In the end, I'm glad I read it. The last time I did was probably about 1999-2000 when I was on my last Salinger kick. You should check it out too. Tell me what you think in the comments.