SOURCE: Bidney, Martin. “The Aestheticist Epiphanies of J. D. Salinger: Bright-Hued Circles, Spheres, and Patches; ‘Elemental’ Joy and Pain.” Style 34, no. 1 (spring 2000): 117-31.

In the following essay, Bidney examines the role of epiphanies in Salinger's short fiction.

Strangely, no attempt has yet been made to find a pattern that can unite the epiphanies of characters in the works of J. D. Salinger. The books and articles about him that have appeared in the last thirty-five years include only a single item with “epiphany” in the title, and even there the word is used in a loose and general way.¹ Sources and parallels for Salinger's literary epiphanies have been sought in many religious traditions. Picking up the hints provided by the “recommended home reading” of “the Upanishads and the Diamond Sutra and Eckhart” that the two older Glass boys, Seymour and Buddy, urged on Franny and Zooey (FZ [Franny...