Nine Stories

"One of my all-time favourite Salinger stories is “The Laughing Man.” In the story, one of the characters is crushed because his girlfriend left him. He shares his emotional situation and heartbreak by telling stories to the children in his Comanche Club troop. The story is told from the perspective of a kid, who doesn’t fully understand what the storyteller is going through, but he’s moved emotionally by the story in which the laughing man dies. I first read “The Laughing Man” when I was a high school student, before I began writing myself. And it struck me: this is a story about a kid being heartbroken because a heartbroken adult tells him a story. It’s transferring to me the heartbreak of Salinger, who made up both these characters. After that, I was never able to read a story without thinking of the frame through which the story is being told. Exactly. The storyteller doesn’t convey knowledge. He doesn’t enlighten the children. His world is an emotional world. In “The Laughing Man,” what makes for a good story is the storyteller’s ability to share something intimate."