jameswharris

Which Has Brought You More Happiness in Life: TV Shows or Websites?

by James Wallace Harris, 9/1/26

In the 21st century, we often talk about how technology has taken over our lives, referring to the Internet, smartphones, and AI. But we forget the major technological revolution that television brought to Baby Boomers. Thinking about it, I realized that television shows have brought me far more pleasure than all the features of the internet.

I love Amazon, YouTube, AppleNews+, Facebook, Wikipedia, ABEbooks, and all the other websites I visit, but they have never made the emotional impact that sitcoms, dramas, and miniseries have made since 1955.

It would be far harder for me to decide between TV shows, books, and music. In fact, I don’t know if I could decide between those three. I do know that if I had to pick between movies on TV and movies at the theater, I’d choose movies on TV.

Watching TV has brought me so much pleasure that it’s impossible to imagine my life without it. This might sound odd, but the tightest bond I’ve had with my wife, Susan, is watching television together for 50 years. This is even truer since I set up a Jellyfin server and put many of our favorite TV shows on it. Every night we watch two hours of old TV together.

Even though the internet is famous for social media, that feels like a solitary pursuit. I have many internet friends I’ve never met, and I value that, but it’s just not the same as sitting in a room with someone else, even if we’re only staring at a screen together. Most of my childhood memories involve watching television, especially with my sister, Becky, but also with my mother and father.

Of course, that’s kind of sad too. People worry about kids spending too much time with screens, but I grew up with TV screens in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s a shame I didn’t spend more time getting to know my parents, especially my dad, who was mostly a mystery to me.

Reading science fiction and listening to music are the only other forms of entertainment that might equal the pleasure of watching TV. I’ve always tried to make science fiction and music more social by seeking out friends who enjoyed them too. But I’ve never had as many people to share science fiction and music with as I’ve had with television shows.

Starting in the 1st grade, I could always talk with people about television shows, from The Mickey Mouse Club to Star Trek. I didn’t meet someone to talk science fiction with until the 10th grade. A while after that, I loved getting together with friends to smoke pot and listen to music, but that only lasted a few years. Talking about television shows has always been the most useful way to have something to talk about. If you meet someone who likes the same show as you, it often means there’s a reason to be friends.

And even when I lived by myself, television was always a better companion than social media. The Tonight Show and The Dick Cavett Show were often great company on lonely nights before I got married.

But I wonder about young people today. Do they feel the same about television, or do they prefer social media? They seem to get a lot of YouTube and internet influencers.

I’ve always found immense pleasure in reading. And that’s truly a solitary pursuit. Science fiction got its start with the pulp magazine era. Before TV became big in the 1950s, millions of people read pulp magazines. Short stories were incredibly popular. When I was growing up and talked with old guys who grew up with the pulps and radio, I got the feeling they preferred them over television. But didn’t television unite the Baby Boomer generation?

When the power goes out, my wife and I get very restless. We miss TV and the internet. But we miss TV most.

I think I could walk away from the Internet. It’s nice being connected to the world. It’s nice having friends on five continents. I’d hate to have to go back to shopping in physical buildings. I couldn’t find the rare books I wanted without ABE. And I couldn’t keep up with relatives and old friends like I can with Facebook. Plus, I’d feel immense anxiety when I leave the house without my smartphone.

What Susan and I really like is watching complete TV series on DVDs. Of course, I rip them to my Jellyfin server, but there’s something special about watching a
TV show from pilot to finale. We’re currently going through the 264 episodes of Frasier, one episode an evening.

However, when you think about it, isn’t it kind of pathetic that we’ve bonded so tightly with something so artificial as a television show, spending so many thousands of hours glued to a TV screen? I suppose we could have grown up differently, but Baby Boomers grew up with television.

TV was the technology that shaped us. TV was our screen of choice.

JWH

How Much Should I Spend to Keep My Refrigerator Running During a Power Outage?

by James Wallace Harris, 8/31/26

148,000 MLGW customers lost power on August 22nd during a severe storm. We only lost electricity for a couple of hours; however, several of our neighbors went five days without power. Over the last twenty years, we have lost power many times for 1-4 days. I wrote about some of those times: “Thrown Off the Grid Kicking and Streaming” in 2017, “Blogging by Candlelight and Paper” in 2011, “Living Like Jane Austen” in 2008.

Every time this happens, I research buying a whole-house generator. And every time, I decide they’re not worth the expense. Over the years, some people I know have bought them, but their reviews have been mixed.

This time, I meditated on what it means to go without power. Am I just being whimpy? Essentially, what hurts the most is having our routines disrupted. The August heat and January cold are unpleasant, but not immediately life-threatening. What pains us is not having TV and computers. That’s pitiful, don’t you think?

My two main worries are freezing pipes and spoiled food. This house survived an ice storm without power for two weeks, so the pipes are probably okay if we keep the water dripping. And we’ve had to throw out a couple hundred dollars of food twice. But is it worth spending $10,000 to save what’s in the refrigerator? According to this video, that’s what it would take to get the icebox going for a week. (Although I could probably do it cheaper because our fridge is smaller and cheaper DIY solutions.)

It does seem unwise to spend thousands to save hundreds. I’ve been watching dozens of YouTube videos about backup power, and there’s an interesting socio-economic divide between the various filmmakers. Many are made by guys who obviously have a lot of money, while the rest are made by do-it-yourself scroungers. I’m not like the guys with expensive homes or the guys who can make $2000 power stations with $200 worth of mail-ordered parts.

The video that impressed me the most was this guy who combined a smaller power station with portable solar panels.

Yet, this is still somewhat complicated. This guy has a house wired to handle this approach. I’d have to get a very long extension cord to run from the solar panels to the Bluetti through an open window, or just carry the Bluetti outside whenever I needed to recharge it. Also, notice this guy is one of those with money. I think prepping is a big hobby for some rich dudes.

That Bluetti with two portable solar panels is $1699 on Amazon. As the video showed, it’s a very versatile setup. It can be used for a variety of devices. And it beats the solutions offered by the guy in the first video. However, do I want to spend $1700 to save maybe $200 in groceries?

I think Susan would prefer to use the Bluetti to keep the TV going. But we learned something from the last two ice storms. In the first ice storm, we learned we wanted our phones the most. After that storm, we went to AT&T and signed up for unlimited data and the ability to have internet hotspots. We also bought a smaller Jackery power station for $200 that can recharge our phones several times.

During the next ice storm, we bundled up in several layers of clothes, got in our La-Z-Boys, covered ourselves with blankets and cats, and streamed movies and TV shows on our phones. It worked great.

We did get tired of eating cold food. We even ate out of the icebox for a couple of days. The cheese and yogurt seemed fine. We ultimately had to throw out a bunch of frozen dinners and veggies, but it was probably less than $100 to replace.

During this recent power failure, we offered to let our neighbor stay with us, but she preferred to stay in her house. We kept her frozen food for her. She didn’t complain much about five days of no air conditioning. She just visited friends and stores with power.

I think the real reason I spend so much time thinking about devising emergency power solutions is that it’s an interesting technical challenge. But do I really want to spend $10,000-$20,000 to solve an interesting problem? Isn’t it just more tech toys that I love?

We have several LED lanterns and a Jackery for the iPhones, and that seems to do well enough. What bothers us is not eating our regular meals or following our daily routines. Susan and I are creatures of habit, and we hate being thrown out of our ruts.

It’s revealing that losing the internet is the most disturbing aspect of power failures. What does that say about us? Our iPhones are little internet lifeboats, and that keeps us somewhat content. But what we want is our big-screen TVs. Isn’t that sad? Probably going without them for several days is character-building.

Still, plunking down the bucks for a Generac so we’re never inconvenienced still tempts me. What I really want is what Base Power offers in Texas. Base Power offers to rent whole-house battery backup. Rent is $19-29 a month, and installation is around a $1000. If everyone’s power company offered that deal, no one would buy whole-house generators or whole-house batteries. Letting the power company deal with everything is the way to go. I think I’ll wait.

Going without electricity is so damn revealing about our personalities that I shouldn’t try to always avoid it.

JWH

Intrinsic Capacity – Tracking My Cognitive Health

by James Wallace Harris, 8/28/26

Today I read in the New York Times, “The Most Important Longevity Term You’ve Probably Never Heard Of” by Dana G. Smith. Doctors are looking for a way to measure how well we’re aging and call it “intrinsic capacity.” They haven’t worked out the details yet, but they want to track five subdomains:

cognition
locomotion (strength and mobility)
sensory capacity (vision and hearing)
psychological well-being
vitality (overall energy levels and resilience to physical stressors)

Naturally, young people should pass with flying colors. It’s only when we get older that these functions start to diminish, so it’s important to track our overall potential for aging. They haven’t worked out a scoring system yet, but they want a quantitative indicator that patients and doctors can use.

At 74, I believe I’m losing on cognition, doing better on locomotion, and that vision and hearing are about the same; I’m on an even keel psychologically, but I’m slowly running out of energy.

In other words, I wouldn’t make a 100 on any Intrinsic Capacity score.

Even before I read this article today, I’ve been thinking about how I can measure my cognitive decline. Let’s be honest here: at some point, everyone’s Intrinsic Capacity score will reach zero.

Let’s assume our healthcare system adopts this idea and tests everyone’s Intrinsic Capacity at age 60. It can’t be relative because people are so different. It should be a personal baseline to work from for the rest of our lives.

If at 60 my score was 100, at 74, I imagine it’s about 75 right now, because I feel I have about 25 percent less capacity now than I did then.

Is it possible to improve one’s score? I think so. For example, in the past, my spinal stenosis was so bad I had to give up walking for exercise. But recently, and I guess because of regular physical therapy exercises, I’m back to walking one mile each day.

This is why tracking an Intrinsic Capacity score is such a good idea. It should push older folks to try harder to stay healthy.

My main worry is memory. I don’t have dementia, but I have a whole lot of getting-old forgetting. So I’ve decided to come up with my own method of tracking my memory’s health.

Remember that movie Still Alice from back in 2014? At one point, she was given a memory test, and her doctor told her several words to remember. I didn’t do well taking that test along with her.

A while back on Jeopardy, one of the contestants mentioned that they used a free software program called Anki to help them study trivia. I decided this week to use Anki as the cognitive test portion of my Intrinsic Capacity test.

(AnkiMobile for iOS is $24.99. It’s possible to bypass that cost by using the web version from your phone, but I like supporting the Anki developers. And Anki is far cheaper than many iOS flashcard apps that charge a monthly fee.)

Using Wikipedia, I made Anki flashcards for all the U.S. Presidents. On the front of the cards, I show their name and picture. On the back, I list their order (1st, 2nd, 3rd, …) and the years they were in office. I remember back when Bush the son was president; my niece could rattle off all the presidents in order.

Even after a few days of practicing an hour each day, I can remember a little over half of the content. Where I’m struggling is remembering the years they were in office. When I first started this project, I included the years each president was born and died, but I quickly realized that recalling all those numbers was too much.

I’m studying in two ways. Before I practice with Anki each day, I write out all the details on a legal pad as practice. I’ve read that writing things down is a good way to remember.

Then, while testing myself with Anki, I use this as a cheat sheet when I don’t know the answer. Anki uses spaced repetition to enhance the learning process. When I see the answer and know how well I remembered it, I hit one of four buttons: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy. That determines how quickly Anki will ask me this question again.

I don’t think just doing the flashcards is enough. That’s why I rewrite the above sheet each day. Mentally, I do all kinds of tricks to help me remember too. Like I say to myself, “Lincoln is a sweet 16.” Or FDR was the 32nd and ran in 32. Or Kennedy was the 35th, and Reagan was the 40th, and I calculate others from there. I’m pretty solid from Teddy to Donald.

I’m also experimenting with reading aloud. I might even set up a voice-transcribing program and dictate the list from memory. I figure reading and writing, listening and dictating, might all reinforce memory.

I think I’ll be able to memorize this list in a few days. (I’ll update this post when I do.)

But how long will I be able to remember this list? Can I maintain this memory if I run through the flashcards once a day? Should I test myself by skipping a week or a month?

This will be my baseline. If I can’t remember it in the future, even after daily practice, I’ll know my Intrinsic Capacity is shrinking. This will be a test for long-term retention.

However, I’m guessing I’ll need to memorize new lists from scratch every now and then to test if I can retain new information. That might also be fun. I can pick subjects that help me when watching Jeopardy. Like books of the Bible, plays by Shakespeare, teams at the Super Bowl, or Best Picture Oscar winners.

I should try to make this more quantitative. I wish I had started this when I was young, so I’d have some data to track and graph. I don’t remember it being easier to memorize things when I was a kid. I made Cs and Bs in school, but I never studied much. However, I did pay attention in class. Whenever I did try to study something hard, I struggled.

I do remember a Shakespeare class I had in college. For each play, we had a 10-question pop quiz. On the first play, I got like 6 out of 10. I read the play, but I tend to read fast. So I went to the library and got the next play on LPs. I read and listened. I got 10 out of 10. The professor always threw in one question that required very close reading. Like what was embroidered on So-in-So’s handkerchief. I got that one. (If I remember right from almost 50 years ago, it was a strawberry. Was it, Desdemona?) After that, I always read along with records, and I got 10 out of 10 each time.

I’ve also bought Beginning Algebra by K. Elayn Martin-Gay to see if I can still learn something hard. I’m doubtful about that. But we’ll see.

JWH

The Next Five Short Stories in The Best American Short Stories 2025

by James Wallace Harris, 8/25/26

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a science fiction writer because I loved reading science fiction. I began thinking about writing after subscribing to science fiction magazines in 1967 and learning how they paid writers. Science fiction magazines and anthologies were my introduction to the short story.

I’m pretty sure they introduced us to literary short stories in junior high, but they made no impact on me. In the 12th grade, I took a creative writing class. I can’t remember any of the stories I wrote for that class, or even the teacher’s name. In college, I also took creative writing classes as electives for my English major. In the 1990s, I got into an MFA program for creative writing. I still have some of the stories I wrote for it.

In all those writing classes, my teachers discouraged us from writing science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and other genre-type stories. My teachers pleaded with us to write about what we knew. I didn’t tell them that what I knew most was science fiction.

In 2002, I went to Clarion West Writers’ Workshop for six weeks in Seattle, Washington. Its focus was science fiction, including a week’s instruction from Gardner Dozois, the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction at the time. Saturday, I received a packet from Clarion West of my old stories. I haven’t had the heart to open them. It was not long after that I gave up hope of ever publishing a short story or writing a novel. Writing fiction was a lifelong dream that I never worked hard enough to make a reality.

In 2020, I joined a Facebook group that read one science fiction short story a day. For almost five years, I kept up with that pace. I had hoped it would inspire me to write again, but it never did.

Most years, around October, I get the latest volume of Best American Short Stories, believing it will inspire me to write again. That hasn’t worked either. However, it does show me what’s going on in literary fiction. It seems that since the 1990s, literary writers have sometimes embraced writing ideas and techniques from genre writers. But then, I feel genre writers have become more literary. I wonder how many of them go through MFA writing programs.

The short story was replaced by the television show in the 1950s. The short story used to be the primary source of 30- to 60-minute doses of fiction. That was the primary product of broadcast television. Streaming television has changed things. Its product is now eight to twelve 30- to 60-minute episodes that tell one story. People often binge-watch them. They’re novel replacements.

An episode of The Big Bang Theory or Law and Order is essentially a short story.

On the other hand, many people have switched to short videos that run a few minutes. They are the equivalent of flash fiction.

Evidently, the short story, whether written or filmed, is no longer appealing. Literary magazines and genre magazines struggle to find audiences larger than several hundred to a few thousand. That’s a shame, because fiction at that length is rather distinctive.

The variety of story types and writing styles is striking in any anthology. In the time it takes to read or listen to one average bestseller, you can read or listen to twenty short stories. A good short story makes an intense emotional impact on the reader. Novels do this too, but require a longer commitment. And I don’t know if all those extra words pay off any more.

The main reason I failed at writing was that I couldn’t create that emotional impact. Here is the next set of stories I read in The Best American Short Stories 2025. I’m going to try to entice you to read them by describing the setup for their emotional impact.

“Maritza and Carman” by Lyn Di Iorio

Maritza was taken in by Juancho after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. She didn’t know who she was or where she came from. Juancho let her work in his cafe, and over the year she found a kind of inner peace working in his garden. Then, Juancho saw Maritza’s picture in the newspaper. It was a picture of a policewoman named Carmen Sandin de O’Farrell. She had rescued people during Hurricane Irma, but was described as having died trying to save her daughter, Taina O’Farrell, in Hurricane Maria.

They contact Taina, who comes to visit. Carmen is told who she was, and that triggers some memories. But as Taina recounts how her mother saved her and her boyfriend, Carmen remembers something different.

Did Carmen lose her memory because of physical injury in the hurricane, or because of what her daughter did? Will she return to her old life?

“Gray, Cotton, White Lace Edges” by Isabelle Fang

May is a college girl who sells her worn underwear to men with fetishes. Then she gets a job working with Bridget on a reality TV show and decides her underwear-selling days are over. May has avoided meeting any of her customers, but her best customer, Bill, asks to meet her after she informs him that he will no longer be getting her panties in the mail. She puts him off by telling him she’ll be out of town on location for three months.

The TV show is about an older white man, John, who has divorced his imported Asian wife and is marrying 19-year-old Ally, who is flying in from the Philippines. May befriends Ally. Her job is to help pull off a wedding for the show, but she identifies with Ally because her father left her mom for a young woman like Ally.

The impact of all of this conveys the icky compromises women have to make with men. Yet, readers are surprised at the decisions the women make. May does meet with Bill, and the ending is an interesting surprise.

“Time of the Preacher” by Bret Anthony Johnston

Holland builds wooden fences, pergolas, decks, and even tree houses. He’s doing great business during Covid because everyone wants to isolate themselves but spend time outdoors. Holland is divorced and misses his ex, Mandy, who is about to remarry. Mandy texts Holland, asking him to come get a snake out of a house she’s renting. A house rented by a preacher who skipped out on her.

Holland goes right over, and they don’t find the snake. He wants to think Mandy just wanted his company and made up the story about the snake. The story is really about how Mandy sees Holland and how he sees her. Holland is not like the icky men in the previous story, but he’s disappointing to Mandy in other ways.

Love the ending, but wonder what it implies.

“Underwater” by Hannah Kingsley-Ma

Sam, the wife, is married to Sam, the husband. Sam, the man, has a twin sister, Lizzy. Sam, the woman, is jealous of her husband’s relationship with his sister. They might be too close.

Sam’s family is jealous that she spends all her vacation time with his family. Sam’s family is just as weird as her in-laws. Sam’s sister, Sarah, has a son who wants to saw off her legs.

This story is a comedy about strange relationships. It asks: who is fucked up? Or should ask: who is fucked up the most?

We’re only given more and more proof of weirdness. My favorite part deals with Lizzy’s weird dog, Dotty.

I’d love to see this story as a TV series.

“Drapetomania” by William Lohier

Drapetomania was a fake, racist mental illness proposed in 1851 by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright. He claimed that enslaved Black people who tried to run away from bondage were suffering from a disease.

William Lohier turns “Drapetomania” into an allegorical horror story.

Nina is in class when Jackson asks to leave class. He leaves and begins running. He keeps running until he dies. We’re told the world has been hit by a condition that makes black people start running and keep running until they die.

Nina has already lost a sister, Demetria, to this condition. Nina is introduced to a senior, Jai, who is a reporter for the local public radio station. She wants to follow Nina to cover the running mania. Nina takes Jai home to meet her mother and brother TomTom.

Jai’s father is Japanese, but her mother is Guyanese. She doesn’t know if she’s black enough to catch the mania.

From here, the story becomes bleaker and bleaker. “Drapetomania” is really a genre story, with a good plot. It has a surreal, nightmarish ending. There’s enough here to make a movie.

It shuddered and rumbled and moaned. Beyond TomTom’s lithe back I could see only a weltering sliver of sun. Runners, I realized. I edged into a sprint. The motel and the moon and the world behind me—it all fell away. Beside me Jai stumbled and slowed, but I couldn’t turn back. We were neck and neck, TomTom and I, blood and blood. The sun enraged the sky and I saw them, before us, haloed in the rising dust. Their feet played the earth like an enormous drum. We ran toward them, enraged, and sweat stung my eyes but I didn’t need to see TomTom to know what his face looked like. Mine looked the same.

Then we were among them, and I could barely see through the grit. Soon it blotted out the sky, and the trees, and left only a red sun and our persons. It was so beautiful, I lost my breath. My feet pounded against the ground until I could no longer feel them.

If “Drapetomania” were stretched out to novel length, would it have a greater impact? I don’t think so. The story isn’t realistic, but it does have great symbolic impact. I can easily imagine Holden Caulfield being so disturbed that he started running and kept running until he died.

Wrapping Up …

I’d love to have written any of these stories. There’s a reason that at least three editors have chosen them. The single most important thing I learned at Clarion West Writers’ Workshop was “great fiction is the accumulation of significant details.” It’s all those details that make us feel for the characters. I seldom could gather enough details to make my stories ignite.

I still have the fantasy of writing science fiction. I’ve thought for years, “If I could only write one good story that got published.” I even know the story and characters I want to write. I’ve attempted that story many times. But I can never finish it in any form that works as well as these five stories.

JWH

“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” by J. D. Salinger

by James Wallace Harris, 8/18/26

It’s been almost seventy years since I’ve cried — well, the boo-hooing, body-shaking, snot-slinging kind of crying. For most of my life, I was in control of my emotions. However, since I’ve gotten older, movies, books, sappy commercials, and even old songs will make my eyes water a bit. Reading “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” gave my eyes a soaking and even stopped up my sinuses.

That’s my concrete review of this story. Now for the verbose version.

I’ve developed a literary theory that I call the “Message in a Bottle” theory. All humans live inside their heads like living alone on a deserted island. Writing, especially fiction, is one solitary individual putting a message in a bottle and throwing it upon the ocean, hoping someone will read it.

However, messages in a bottle have an inherent limitation. Language is a poor tool for describing what we feel. I doubt I’d want to experience what was in J. D. Salinger’s head when he wrote: “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” It would have been too intense, too painful. Actually, it might have killed me to have had telepathic contact with Salinger. So, in that regard, we should be thankful for the limitations of words.

On the other hand, I think we wish we weren’t alone. I’m not sure even the closest of lovers ever get that near to each other. I suppose if telepathy existed, it would allow us to share feelings and maybe feel we weren’t alone. I’ve often wondered if twins achieve anything close to telepathy. Theoretically, those poor souls who have multiple personalities could share their feelings, but from everything I’ve heard about such folks, they only occupy the body one at a time.

Most writers create works that don’t attempt to describe what’s inside their heads. They either paint with words something they see outside of themselves and hope readers recognize it. Or imagine something they hope readers will recognize.

J. D. Salinger worked to describe exactly what he felt. I assume that’s why he’d get so furious with editors when they tried to alter his work. He knew the limitations of words, so he used them very carefully. Like any message-in-a-bottle story, the words are going to fall. However, Salinger knew that if he could use just the right words, they could trigger pale imitations of his emotions in us. The key was coding his message just so.

“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” is about a staff sergeant in London just before being shipped out on D-Day. And that same sergeant after the war ends. J. D. Salinger endured five brutal WWII campaigns, from D-Day to walking into a concentration camp.

There is no way readers can understand what J. D. Salinger experienced. Salinger’s biographers, David Shields and Shane Salerno, in Salinger, said: “Of the 337 days the war lasted for the American soldier in Europe, Salinger was in combat for 299.” We could read every history of WWII combat in Europe and never come within light-years of what Salinger experienced. Salinger had a nervous breakdown after his company discovered the death camp.

How can anyone write about that experience? The thing is, we can’t, not in any definitive or rational way. Salinger continued to write throughout the war, carrying around chapters of Catcher in the Rye with him in combat. He obviously wanted to express himself. And after the war, he disavowed the stories he had written before it.

“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” is merely a postcard from hell. It was published in The New Yorker, April 8, 1950. You can read it online here. Or buy a copy of Nine Stories, one of four official Salinger books. (One famous novel, and three story collections.)

After the war, it was obvious that Salinger had what we now call PTSD. Of all the stories I’ve read by Salinger, this one is his most direct attempt to convey his war experience.

After 1945, Salinger had a thing for children and young people. The people who knew him felt children represented pre-war innocence to Salinger.

In the first half of the story, an American staff sergeant visits a children’s choir in London and then goes to a tearoom. This part is told in first person.

While drinking his first cup of tea, the thirteen-year-old girl, Esmé, who had been the standout singer in the choir, her little brother Charles, and their aunt arrive in the tearoom and seat themselves near the narrator. Esmé and Charles come over to his table, and the sergeant and children have a charming conversation. (There are many parallels in this story’s structure to Salinger’s more famous story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”)

In the second half of the story, it switches into the third person. The setting is Bavaria several weeks after V-E Day. Staff Sergeant X is barely hanging on mentally. His buddy Clay says, “I wrote Loretta you had a nervous breakdown.” X is sitting at a table with mail and packages addressed to him. Salinger is conjuring Kafka.

When Clay leaves, X opens a package and discovers it’s from Esmé.

This is when my eyes get watery. They are watering again as I type. It is a very effective message in a bottle. I can never know what was inside Salinger’s head, but it must have been beyond intense. Reading his biography is incredibly intense. The poor bastard was fucked up for the rest of his life.

My theory is fucked up people resonate with Salinger, and that’s why he’s sold more than 60 million copies of his famous novel. Many of those readers drove Salinger to hide from the world when they tried to chase him down. He even came to regret publishing The Catcher in the Rye.

I believe Salinger was so successful because he was so damn good at writing messages in a bottle. The question is: Are readers still successfully decoding his stories?

Many literary critics believe a story has to stand on its own. And I can understand that sentiment, but I disagree quite strongly. I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye twice in my lifetime. Both times it made a great impression. But I need to read it again since I’ve read Salinger. My earlier impressions weren’t even close.

Before now, I had no idea how tortured Salinger’s soul was when I read The Catcher in the Rye. I understood Holden Caulfield was a tortured teen, not to the level GI Salinger was. There are novels by certain writers, like Thomas Wolfe, Jack Keruoauc, and Philip K. Dick, that you can’t really understand until you read several biographies about them. What they have in common is tortured souls.

I doubt I would have teared up for “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” if I had not read Salinger. If you’ve read the story, or will read it, let me know how it affected you. Let me know if you’ve read about Salinger.

By the way, if you’re not willing to read a 600-page biography, there’s a documentary based on the book. Watch it on Amazon Prime. It conveys only 1% of the information and intensity of reading the biography, but it does help you understand J. D. Salinger.

JWH