ESME
(EHZ-may)
Title
character of a short story by J.D. Salinger Common clues:
Salinger
girl; Salinger dedicatee; Salinger title girl; Salinger lass;
“For ___, With Love and Squalor”; Salinger orphan;
J.D. Salinger heroine Crossword
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things you probably didn't know about J D Salinger Video:
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Stories Book Trailer
I
am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to
make me happy.
~ J D Salinger
"For
Esmé – with Love and Squalor" is a short story
by J. D. Salinger. Originally published in The New Yorker on
April 8, 1950, it was anthologized in Salinger's Nine Stories two
years later (while the story collection's American title is Nine
Stories, it is actually known as For Esmé - with Love &
Squalor in most countries). For Esmé is an Army sergeant's
(referred to only as Sergeant X) recollection of a meeting he had
with a young girl, Esmé, before he was sent into combat.
His strange but loving relationship with Esmé helps him to
endure the squalor of war. Lack of purity and innocence in the
adult world, love of childhood itself, and the power of words and
writing are among the story's themes.
The
short story was immediately popular with readers; less than two
weeks after its publication, on April 20, Salinger "had
already gotten more letters about For Esmé than he had for
any story he had published." The story was referred to by
Salinger biographer Paul Alexander as a "minor masterpiece,"
and Time has called it "the warmest and best of the Nine
Stories."
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "For Esme - With Love and Squalor".
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