Part of Salinger's Glass Family series (and one of the pieces originally published in the New Yorker that eventually appeared in Nine Stories -- yes, Lisa Loeb's ["Stay (I Missed You)"] backing band was named after the 1953 book). IMO this is where Salinger's debt to Papa Hemingway is laid bare -- the spare, simple prose; the occasional sweary moments (where the protagonist, Seymour, calls a woman he meets a "goddamned sneak"); the somewhat sudden, surprising and macabre ending. I find people typicially have no middle ground for Salinger that isn't "Catcher in the Rye" -- they either love it or loathe it. I'm in the former camp.
