 National Book Award finalist Richard Yates told The New York Times in 1977 that reading Salinger 's stories for the first time was a landmark experience , and that " nothing quite like it has happened to me since " . Yates describes Salinger as " a man who used language as if it were pure energy beautifully controlled , and who knew exactly what he was doing in every silence as well as in every word . " Gordon Lish 's O. Henry Award @-@ winning short story " For Jeromé — With Love and Kisses " ( 1977 , collected in What I Know So Far , 1984 ) , is a parody of Salinger 's " For Esmé — with Love and Squalor " . 
