For me, ”A Perfect Day for Bananafish” was a great way to start Salinger’s book Nine Stories. I thoroughly enjoyed Salinger’s dialogue in this particular story. I thought that the dialogue had a nice rhythm and pace throughout the story. Based on this story alone, I think Salinger incorporates more dialogue between characters than any other author we have read this year. Dialogue seems to be a critical aspect of Salinger’s stories. There wasn't much story telling or narration in ”A Perfect Day for Bananafish”. In The things they Carried, relationships are a huge part of the story, but dialogue is not nearly as common or as important to the plot of the stories. In Hemingway’ s book, In our Time, some stories that were situated in nature and isolated from society did not have very much dialogue at all. I haven’t read any other stories written by Salinger yet, so I can’t say for sure but it definitely seems like Salinger emphasizes conversations between characters. 

I find dialogue in short stories, especially Salinger’s dialogue, to be easy to read and follow. For one, I find stories with dialogue are easy to follow and not as complicated to the non-dialogue books. Second, dialogue allows the reader to interpret the way they think the character would speak. This allows the reader some originality and freedom to visualize the voices of the character, according to their own imagination.  The characters reputation and actions will obviously guide the reader to visualize the way the character speaks, but nevertheless, the reader still retains some originality of interpretation. This facet of short stories makes this book seem more engaging for me. 

I think its amazing how Salinger is able to convey so much information and set up so much of the plot of the story, strictly with dialogue. The initial conversation between Muriel and her mother set up the entire story. Without Salinger telling us directly, we learn that Muriel is a materialistic girl, who has a strange relationship with her protective mother. Without even meeting Seymour until later in the story, we already know that he is an unstable personality and that his marriage with Muriel is unsteady. When we meet Seymour later in the story, we already know he is having emotional problems. In the initial dialogue between Muriel and her mother, I found the part where they are interrupting one another to be extremely effective in understanding their relationship and their feelings towards the topic of conversation. Often times authors don't emphasize tone and interruptions of speech in their dialogues but Salinger seems to. Interruptions in everyday speech are actually very common and they say a lot about the characters. The way Muriel’s mother talks about Seymour and the fear in her voice, gives the reader an idea of the extent of Seymour’s issues. 

I cant wait to read more of Salinger’s short  stories. I am curious see if Salinger uses other interesting techniques in his dialogue in other stories.