Monday, February 1, 2010

J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger's short story "For Esme--with Love and Squalor" is clever and haunting. The first part of the story is a rather charming encounter between a soldier and a girl, though we learn the girl has experienced the loss of war, and there are suggestions the soldier may have already experienced some of the trauma of war. The second part of the story shows the soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder, obviously debilitated by his experience of war, but saved, perhaps, by the possibility of innocent human connection.

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