"Along this road goes no one": Salinger's "Teddy" and the failure of love - J. D. Salinger - Critical Essay | Studies in Short Fiction |

"Along this road goes no one": Salinger's "Teddy" and the failure of love - J. D. Salinger - Critical Essay | Studies in Short Fiction | Find Articles:

How about that! A critic who agrees with me that Salinger's story "Teddy" is not about a mystical prodigy so much as about a troubled boy. Man, when I posted my interpretation in 2007 the comments flooded in (here, with 58 comments), some of them very mean-spirited. And the majority critical opinion long has favored the story as what amounts to propaganda. Salinger is too good a writer to write propaganda -- the story is brilliant because it is not about its easy, surface meaning. At any rate, I don't want to swat the hornet's nest again, and I hope the comments to come appear at the article above, and not here! I've been called enough names for one lifetime, thank you very much. Until someone convinces me that the swimming pool is empty, and the story has no evidence of that (Teddy's "what if" is not evidence), I stay with my interpretation.