With Love and Squalor: 14 Writers Respond to the Work of J. D. Salinger
edited by Thomas Beller and Kip Kotzen
Broadway Books

More than one of the authors featured in Kip Kotzen and Thomas Beller's "With Love and Squalor" makes the point that the very act of writing a book about young people invites a comparison to Salinger. Since young authors almost always write about young people, being compared to Salinger has become something of a literary rite of passage.

Salinger's shadow looms large in our culture. As "The Catcher in the Rye" is assigned reading at many of the nation's high schools, any writer educated in this country in the past three decades is likely to have encountered Salinger at a formative stage in their creative lives. The essays collected here dissect what it is about this slim body of work that is so affecting to young readers and young writers. At least, that's what they're supposed to do.

Of the writers featured in this collection, some love Salinger, some once loved him, some resent him. But too often the essays just address the lot of young literary stars who haven't yet earned their stripes to a significant enough degree that they can be turning in ruminations on themselves and their own bodies of work in such a public forum.

Although these essays aim to be personal rather than academic, it's hard to stomach this particular group of writers talking about their work and its explicit ties to Salinger. There are exceptions to this — Benjamin Anastas comes across as the smartest of this bunch in his well-written "An Unexamined Life." But most of the other essays, such as Lucinda Rosenfeld's "The Trouble With Franny" or Karen E. Bender's "Normal People," the title of which actually quotes the title of her own book, seem shallow and self-serving. They're both able writers, but their essays feel undergraduate.

The best essays in these pages are the ones that synthesize a personal voice and an acute reading of Salinger's work. Those include Aleksander Hemon's "The Importance of Wax and Olives," on the totemic significance of everyday objects in Salinger's universe, and Charles D'Ambrosio's "Salinger and Sobs," a very personal yet no less engaging look at suicide and death in the essayist's life and Salinger's world, and the aforementioned piece by Anastas, which explores the role of family in life and in art. These pieces offer insights into the work of both their authors and the subject at hand, demonstrating a sense of perspective and engagement surprisingly lacking among these writers' colleagues. The bulk of these essays have no insight to offer whatsoever, unless you want to learn more about how novelist Amy Sohn has an unlucky love life.

Both the book at hand and the entire body of Salinger's work have some of the same shortcomings. Salinger at his worst feels silly and emptily charming, and that's precisely how the majority of this book feels. While it is nice to hear from some of our still-rising stars, this book is more about them than it is about Salinger himself. Readers would do well to revisit their high school papers on Salinger; some of the insights are bound to be as interesting as anything here. Or better yet, just pick up "Franny and Zooey."

— Rumaan Alam (rumaanalam@hotmail.com)