Adam Gopnik's sparkling Salinger "Postscript" in the February 8th issue of The New Yorker sums up Salinger's writing better than anything else we've read.
Gopnik writes of Salinger's ear for American dialogue, his "essential gift for joy" and, how "that amid the malice and falseness of social life, redemption rises from clear speech, and childlike enchantment, from all the forms of unselfconscious innocence that still surround us," statements that explain Salinger's fascination with children and his reluctance to paint them or their experience as perfect. "Writing, real writing," he says, " is done not from some seat of fussy moral judgment but with the eye and ear and heart; no American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart than his." Note to writers (including self): Forget that MFA, "high-hearted" moral posturing and all the other (to borrow Holden's word ) crap and start paying closer attention to what you hear from those around you and your own heart.