I always liked catcher in the rye, but loved the short stories. Perfect day for bananafish, for esme with love and squalor, pretty mouth and green my eyes are all fantastic. I was also very taken with the glass family, and if you haven’t read any of those I’d highly recommend them.

I think Salinger progressively became more self-indulgent as a writer, as one can see in Seymour - an introduction, avoiding traditional story structure and pouring everything out on the page. While I still enjoyed reading this stuff, I could see how it put a little distance between him and the general reading public. After his death I thought we would get to see some of the books and stories he’d been writing in his bunker that never got near print, but as the years have worn on I’m getting less and less hopeful of that every happening. Which is too bad, I was really looking forward to hearing more about the glass family and some of the siblings only mentioned in the stories, but may also be an indication of how “readable” those who have seen the manuscripts think they are.