by J.D. Salinger
I . A Perfect Day for Bananafish
first read: wtf did i just read?
had to look up sparknotes ngl
critique of the materialistic consumer society of postwar America, which reveled in excess and gluttony
prosperous period marked a drastic departure from the scarcity necessitated by the war and the Depression that preceded it
for a returning soldier like Salinger himself or Seymour the character, who was coming home from a devastated Europe, this new American boom led to disorientation and unease
postmodernism: works were often minimalist in style, ambiguous in content, and heavily reliant on dialogue to convey meaning; the postmodern writing of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Salinger was the building block for the antiestablishment movement of the 1960s
the antiestablishment movement in literature, music, and society in general rejected the empty materialism of the postwar era and strives to regain a state of childlike innocence
read sparknotes then re-read
II. Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut
it would suck to be Mary Jane — to be stuck in a loveless marriage, haunted(?) by the ghost of her past lover who died, and uncertain of ones own character
I read For Esmé — with Love and Squalor too, and enjoyed it, but not as much as I’d hoped. I didn’t read the other short stories because I didn’t feel compelled to.
