J.D. Salinger's Nine Stories

J.D. Salinger's writing gives me the feeling that he thought and behaved in a way that was far more advanced than his contemporaries.  After reading Catcher in the Rye, I browsed through the internet for information on this writer and was surprised to find that he died of a very old age recently.

My conclusion is that his writings are still "cool" , in fact a lot "cooler" than a lot of writers these days.  I am particularly amazed by the way he protrayed his protagonist in De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period.  I can't believe that the stories were written in the 40's, except for the fact that most characters in his stories seemed to be chain-smoking themselves to death all the time.