For Esmé ~ with Love and Squalor

A lapping sense of desperate hopelessness and melancholy suffuse this book.
The title story is the most beautiful, of a shell-shocked soldier writing a story for a little-girl-grown-up that he once met in a tea shop. Salinger has much sympathy with the soldier, perhaps drawing on his own experience as a soldier in WW2, although there are very few adults in the collection that he seems to have much time for.
Most of the people in the stories are ones that have successfully closed their eyes to the helpless banality (in Salinger's view, I think) of their lives. The people that he writes sympathetically of are those with their eyes open, all of which seem to meet a terrible end, almost as if they cannot bear what they have seen and prefer to end their suffering. This feeling that runs throughout the stories is best explained with the fact that Salinger now lives as a recluse, with hardly any contact with the outside world.
Children are written of with much grace and beauty in these stories though, it seems as if Salinger cherished their insight and lack of pretense.
One of the most heartbreaking stories is the final one, called 'Teddy', it is about a precocious ten-year-old, who, when asked how he would teach children, says;

'"Well... I'm not too sure what I'd do," Teddy said. "I know I'm pretty sure I wouldn't start with the things schools usually start with." He folded his arms, and reflected briefly. "I think I'd first assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that... The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting grass to look a certain way - your way -... I'd want them to begin with all the real ways of looking at things..."

One thing that strikes me as particularly sad about the stories is that they they are just such a keen of lost hope. You feel very depressed after reading them because Salinger is capable of creating great beauty, but it is clear he feels it is a bit worthless. That is why it's such a shame he hasn't published anything else for 40 years. He has written many things, apparently, but has just given up on the world. That is what is so sad, I suppose, the defeat in the stories, the surrender.