Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour An Introduction – J. D. Salinger, 1963 ½★

Losing the Plot

After effortlessly crafting a bestselling book by combining two previously published short stories, J. D. Salinger went back to the well. This time, the link between the pair is much less apparent, and the result less happy.

Man, do I hate this book. To be more specific, I really hate the second half, “Seymour An Introduction.” It’s a car wreck of an abortive fictional profile that, instead of making the more disciplined first half read better, magnifies its narcissistic, undisciplined qualities.

John Updike wasn’t kidding when he wrote: “Salinger loves the Glasses more than God loves them.” This is what happens when a previously brilliant writer literally and completely loses the plot.

Franny And Zooey – J. D. Salinger, 1961 ★★★

Pilgrims Progress on the Upper East Side

There are books I enjoy reading that I will recommend to anyone happily, unreservedly, because I feel pretty sure you will enjoy them, too. Then there are books like this, which I find diverting and worthy, but also somewhat dubious of merit and selective in appeal.

It is one of its author’s most beloved works, but is Franny And Zooey any good? I don’t know, I guess, maybe. Sure.

Essentially a novel in the form of a linked short story and novella, Franny And Zooey is where Salinger converted from writer to spiritual advisor. His fluid style always followed its own mystical channels, but this marks a clear break from conventional storycraft.

Three Early Stories – J. D. Salinger, 2014 ★★½

Trickles from a Logjam

The total official literary output of J. D. Salinger was expected to grow considerably following his death in 2010. Legend had it that the famously reclusive writer spent his decades of retirement from public life toiling on fiction only his passing would allow to see the light.

If those manuscripts exist, they remain locked away. But in 2014 there was a brief trickle of posthumous output, three more short stories to add to the nine we have, along with Catcher In The Rye and four novellas.

These, still the newest Salinger stories as of the beginning of 2025, include two of the oldest, first published in magazines in 1940. The other appeared for the first time in late 1944, by which time Salinger was a combat intelligence officer on the Siegfried Line.

Nine Stories – J. D. Salinger, 1953 ★★★★½

Living in the Material World

How many times does one pick up a well-read book expecting one thing only to be surprised? It’s less common for me as I get older, but there are surprises. One of the happiest of them came recently, re-reading this notoriously downgraded staple of suburban libraries.

What you get here is a case for the short story as the supreme form of fiction. Each piece is its own jewel of storytelling economy and creative ambiguity. And as thematically linked ruminations on the human condition, they take on added luster in the form of concept album.

His Vedantic philosophy may not be for everyone, but one doesn’t need to be an acolyte to appreciate J. D. Salinger’s finest hour.

Octopussy – Ian Fleming, 1966 ★★½

Bonds and Sods

The book that unnerved me more than any other, if only because I had to ask a female store clerk if they had it in stock, is this capstone to the career of one of my favorite authors. From the title to the usually hideous cover art, it remains a strange outlier in the Bond oeuvre.

While not a great read, Octopussy is by no means terrible. Ian Fleming was always troubled by the outlandish nature of his character’s adventures, frequently pointing out real espionage is never so thrilling. Keep that in mind when reading this.

In each of the three stories, Bond deals in lower-key activities, seedy forays into the underbelly of humanity involving little to no personal risk. His job is putting an end to his government’s enemies, one way or another, but there is a sense of resigned boredom about it.

Elbow Room – James Alan McPherson, 1979 ★★★★

A Masterclass in Miniature

When short stories work, it’s not in the way of compressed novels. They follow a different logic, setting in motion more open-ended explorations of the mind. Often, what results is not a concrete conclusion so much as a broader reconsideration of a specific feeling or idea.

At least that is the case in this collection of short stories by James Alan McPherson. A man is embarrassed by the rough life of his cousin. A barber struggles to adjust to a changing marketplace. A naïve woman displays unexpected cunning to beat a drunken-driving charge.

McPherson’s stories center around problems of social isolation. Sometimes they are told in ways that suggest an unreliable narrator at work. Often, there is an aspect in dealings with others that smacks of outright rudeness. A woman in a doctor’s office is accosted by a stranger: “As a concerned person, and as your brother, I ask you, without meaning to offend, how did you get that scar on the side of your face?”

The Snow-Image And Other Twice-Told Tales – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851 ★★

Hawthorne's Final Grab Bag

There is not enough fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne; life kept getting in his way. But he wrote more tales and sketches than I once thought.

Much better known are two other short-fiction collections. The first is a recognized classic of American literature, Twice-Told Tales. The second, Mosses From An Old Manse, may be his greatest book. Just recently I found this later collection containing some of the last short pieces Hawthorne wrote.

Just how essential is The Snow-Image, anyway?

Mosses From An Old Manse – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1846 ★★★★★

 A Writer Arrives

In the annals of American literature, no eminence put himself down with more avidity than Nathaniel Hawthorne. Titling his second published collection of writings Mosses From An Old Manse after calling his first Twice-Told Tales is a clear sign of low self-esteem.

Which would you rather read? Some choice, right?

Mosses From An Old Manse is the less-known title, but a better book. Though not narratively connected, having been originally published over a number of years, they lay out Hawthorne’s compelling visions for the nature of art in society and the whole meaning of life. Not every short story in it is a masterpiece; not every masterpiece in it is a short story.

The Man Who Knew Too Much – G. K. Chesterton, 1922 ★

No Justice, Please, We're British

The biggest mystery in this collection of mystery stories is why G. K. Chesterton is so renowned for writing them. Going by the evidence of this book alone, building a mystery was not something the man did well.

The eight tales all feature Horne Fisher, a brilliant yet somewhat languid product of upper-class Great Britain, back when class still meant something. In each story, Fisher analyzes a particular situation, offers up a few paradoxical aphorisms, leaps to some bizarre conclusion that Chesterton strains to show as somehow exactly right, then explains to his reporter friend Harold March why he won’t do a single thing to right whatever wrong has been committed.

The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh – Evelyn Waugh, 1998 ★★★

Novelist Keeps it Short

Being a bad guy has its uses. In fiction, Evelyn Waugh dished out cruelty in a way that kept readers both delighted and coming back for more.

No wonder he was so cynical.

The Complete Stories Of Evelyn Waugh collects everything fictional Waugh ever published short of novels. The result is a train wreck of dangerous travels, bad marriages, family insanity, and death which showcases the range of one of the last century’s literary masters.

Old New York – Edith Wharton, 1924 ★★★★½

Casualties in Crinoline 

Short-story collections can be like concept albums where individual pieces flow together to create a thematic whole. At their best, these collections contain dialogues not only within the stories, but between them.

I have seen it happen with Hemingway’s in our time and James Alan McPherson’s Elbow Room. In Old New York I got to see it again, in perhaps its most successful version yet. Here are four novellas that, terrific as they read in isolation, develop when read together a unity of setting and message that transports you to another place and time.

For Your Eyes Only – Ian Fleming, 1960 ★★★½

Cherchez la femme

Other than being insanely hot, Bond Girls are not all of one type. For Your Eyes Only is a chance to experience some of their variety in a collection of five short stories that feature Agent 007.

This was the first Bond book of a new decade, a decade Bond helped define but hardly rated in this soon. For Your Eyes Only is a quiet book that way, and for its lack of baroque storycraft or campy exaggeration. For once, Ian Fleming was writing carefully and on the level; the result is a fine short-story collection that may even please some non-fans.

Twice-Told Tales – Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1837 & 1842 ★★★

The Iron Tissue of Allegory

Allegory in stories is unpopular for many reasons.

They are moralistic. They present cardboard characters and a restricted point-of-view. Critical aspects of fiction-writing like tone and voice are lost when it all boils down to imparting a lesson.

So in noting that Twice-Told Tales presents Nathaniel Hawthorne as master of allegory, I realize this is like praising with faint damns.

Babylon Revisited And Other Stories – F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1960 ★★★★½

Going Long on Selling Short

Can one make the same basic point without becoming shrill or droning?

The answer is yes, if one is F. Scott Fitzgerald and the subject the hollowness of wealth. The best-known collection of Fitzgerald’s short fiction, Babylon Revisited And Other Stories, amazes and engages while beating its one-eyed message like a tom-tom.

The ten stories that make up this collection originally appeared in magazines between 1920-1937. From the first, “The Ice Palace,” to the last, “The Long Way Out,” these varied tales of lost youth and romantic disappointment are all filtered through the prism of wealth and privilege.

Dubliners – James Joyce, 1914 ★★★★★

The Stuff of Life

Short-story collections come in all types. Some are hodgepodges, some genre exercises, some focus on specific characters. Then there are the stories of Dubliners, connected by both a setting and something less a theme than a tone.

Call it a concept album in prose.

That is one of the amazing things about Dubliners, how James Joyce crafts a unified tone poem while the stories themselves traverse all kinds of territory. Not geographic territory – it’s all happening in Dublin – but territory of the soul.

No Comebacks – Frederick Forsyth, 1982 ★★★★

Forsyth in a Different Vein

Why didn’t Frederick Forsyth become the biggest name in thriller writing?

This short-story collection, published toward the end of a great run of commercial and critical success, posits the idea that while forging an approach to his genre others like Ludlum and Clancy would pursue more diligently (if with less talent) what Fred really wanted was to be O. Henry.

People who picked up No Comebacks in the spring of 1982 expecting ten quick doses of the sort of top-notch thriller writing Forsyth had been producing since 1971’s The Day Of The Jackal (which continued up through 1984’s The Fourth Protocol, his last great novel) were disappointed. I know I was. A few stories offer suspense of this kind, but the overall body count is low and tension is of a more everyday variety.

Different Seasons – Stephen King, 1982 ★★★★

Reclaiming the Lost Art of the Novella

During his first seven years as America’s biggest-selling author, Stephen King took readers into all kinds of forbidden, frightening territory. Haunted hotels, apocalyptic ruins, teenage hormones, he ran the gamut. In 1982, King ventured into a dead zone of a different kind: Novellas.

Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories – Edited by Nahum N. Glatzre, 1971 ★★

Kafka: Thinking Outside the Bug

The term “Kafkaesque” is part of our language. What does it mean? This comprehensive collection of Franz Kafka’s short fiction begs more questions than it answers.

One common definition is “darkly surreal.” In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka’s best-known story and one included in this book, a guy wakes up one morning to discover he is a giant bug. Dark and surreal, right?

Masterpieces Of Mystery: The Golden Age, Part I – Compiled by Ellery Queen, 1977 ★★

What Was So Golden about the Golden Age?

Detective fiction long ago moved from the whodunit to the whydunit; today it often employs a complicated, psychological approach. So what can be learned from this anthology of mystery writers from its simpler Golden Age?

Do any of them still stand up to modern scrutiny, apart from Agatha Christie, still the reigning Shakespeare of the form? After reading through these 350 pages, I’m still wondering.

Anton Chekhov's Short Stories: A Norton Critical Edition – Edited by Ralph E. Matlaw, 1979 ★★★½

34 Stories, Many More Conclusions

Stuck in a baseball frame of mind with the playoffs underway and my team eliminated, I find myself pondering literary figures the way I do baseball stars. Some are known for home runs. Others are less spectacular but more consistent singles hitters.

After reading this old Norton collection containing 34 of Anton Chekhov’s short stories, I’m inclined to push against any Ruthian comparisons and place the famous Russian author with other great singles hitters; Eddie Collins, Rod Carew, Ichiro Suzuki, and Ben Jonson. Solid swing, but you expect the ball to stay in the park.