 Contemporary critics discuss a clear progression over the course of Salinger 's published work , as evidenced by the increasingly negative reviews received by each of his three post @-@ Catcher story collections . Ian Hamilton adheres to this view , arguing that while Salinger 's early stories for the " slicks " boasted " tight , energetic " dialogue , they had also been formulaic and sentimental . It took the standards of The New Yorker editors , among them William Shawn , to refine his writing into the " spare , teasingly mysterious , withheld " qualities of " A Perfect Day for Bananafish " ( 1948 ) , The Catcher in the Rye , and his stories of the early 1950s . By the late 1950s , as Salinger became more reclusive and involved in religious study , Hamilton notes that his stories became longer , less plot @-@ driven , and increasingly filled with digression and parenthetical remarks . Louis Menand agrees , writing in The New Yorker that Salinger " stopped writing stories , in the conventional sense ... He seemed to lose interest in fiction as an art form — perhaps he thought there was something manipulative or inauthentic about literary device and authorial control . " In recent years , some critics have defended certain post @-@ Nine Stories works by Salinger ; in 2001 , Janet Malcolm wrote in The New York Review of Books that " Zooey " " is arguably Salinger 's masterpiece ... Rereading it and its companion piece " Franny " is no less rewarding than rereading The Great Gatsby . " 
