Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

by J.D. Salinger

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, American, Literature

18 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Works, most notably novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), of American writer Jerome David Salinger often concern troubled, sensitive adolescents.

People well know this author for his reclusive nature. He published his last original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980. Reared in city of New York, Salinger began short stories in secondary school and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948, he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker, his subsequent home magazine. He released an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield especially influenced adolescent readers. Widely read and controversial, sells a quarter-million copies a year.

The success led to public attention and scrutiny: reclusive, he published new work less frequently. He followed with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton. In the late 1990s, Joyce Maynard, a close ex-lover, and Margaret Salinger, his daughter, wrote and released his memoirs. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but the ensuing publicity indefinitely delayed the release.

Another writer used one of his characters, resulting in copyright infringement; he filed a lawsuit against this writer and afterward made headlines around the globe in June 2009. Salinger died of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life or of the work -
And, if it choose the latter, must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
W.B. Yeats

Nuthin's any good any more.
Joni Mitchell, Voice-over from her song Harry's House.

"NUTHIN's any good any more!" So seems to say this post-war social butterfly of an entertaining and affluent hostess, Eloise. And Salinger pulls no punches in showing us she's missed the boat in life.

For Eloise has given love and Grace - "a heavenly mansion" - a resounding NO.

And when her fellow wartime classmate and 'good' friend (Good meaning a person who TRIES HARD to be nice), Mary Jane, drops in for a casual afternoon drink, the dark day plummets into the amoral chaos of a play by Edward Albee.

Who's Afraid of Eloise? Quite frankly, we ALL are at the story's end.

She alienates everyone who wanders into her sad life. But, get this: Eloise is a Catalyst! You know the type - a party girl who injects LIFE into every conversation. As a hostess in upper middle class circles she's non pareil.

So there, you see? Perfection of the WORK. The Work of Deception...

And when Mary Jane, the NICE girl, pointedly tells Eloise that surely there's more to life than having fun, Eloise acidly retorts that there is indeed, if you want to be a NUN.

Poor Mary Jane is trumped. As Ramona, Eloise's young daughter, has been - in her presence - since infancy. Is it any wonder Ramona rates high on the Autism spectrum?

At a party Eloise is a hit. But inside herself she's a dud.

Sorta like I was in the eighties. A successful middle manager back then, my minimally medicated bipolar condition made me choose a hard edge to my business relationships. Socially, I could be a Catalyst too. For fireworks.

One night, I remember, after a long contractual meeting in Montreal, we were forced by a winter blizzard to book a hotel. Fred, a shy but brilliant technician on our project, knocked on my door long after we had had our meal.

I was listening to some pleasant New Age music which he must have heard from the hall. Restful music seemed foreign to Fred, a guy who could never relax. When I offered him a glass of the scotch I'd got from a nearby store, he told me he had been on the wagon for most of his life.

Whoops. That explained it. I hurriedly put the bottle away, but Fred was shaken. He left soon after.

You know, folks, many people just don't have the armour to face the world head-on. I know I don't - now.

Like Fred. And Mary Jane, after this fateful night is over, quite possibly.

Not to mention little Ramona - she's so scared of her Mom that she has her "invisible friends." And that's SCARY. As Poe said, her mom is moving her into the maelstrom.

Well, after finishing this story I thought that the ways people choose to have fun can be very dangerous...

They ignore the ancient saying:

Be CAREFUL what you say to others -

For you have no IDEA of the battles your friends and loved ones are fighting!

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Typical of classic literature the descriptive passages are very moving. I’m always amazed how the story can revolve around a three hour ordinary event and become a fully evolved beautiful short story...though this is a sad one.

[Kansas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eloise y Ramona, madre e hija, incomunicación, nostalgia de un pasado por parte de Eloise lo que le causa insatisfacción y un sentimiento de pérdida, y los amigos imaginarios de Ramona, resultado de todo lo anterior. Magnífico cuento sobre lo que no podemos ser como resultado de las decepciones.

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feel so sad after reading this story.

I’m still obsessed with the way Salinger captures moments of people’s lives with all the messy details that sometimes don’t make perfect sense to the reader, so you really feel like a fly on the wall. Anyway, Eloise is just so carelessly cruel and dismissive to other people it’s hard to read. But she also has a moment of self-awareness about it at the end. I don’t know why but it makes me emotional.

[Glenda · Rating 1 out of 5]

So depressing. I’m glad I’m done with that. Such a sad story.

[Eva B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second favorite out of NINE STORIES. Apparently someone tried to adapt this to a film, but it turned out pretty phony. Goddamn movies, you know?

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two young women get together to drink "highballs" non-stop. They "were talking in the manner peculiar, probably limited, to former college roommates."

They have a shared history and speak in shorthand. One of them has a daughter, Ramona, who has an invisible boyfriend. This naturally evokes how much emphasis the two women place or their boyfriends and husbands—also invisible within this late 1940s story. Some have died in the recent War.

As the two women become increasingly intoxicated, plans are upended and the mood turns sour and maudlin.

I've marked this story as "humour" but writing this review I recognize it is much more. Is it satirical, or is a reflection of post-War gallows humour? Salinger covers a range of material in this deceptively straightforward tale of college roommates meeting for a drink.

[Barb H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially, I did not like this story because I found the two main characters unpleasant, selfish and totally unlikable. After thinking about it further, I revert to my thoughts that any author who writes about characters so realistically and can cause the reader such strong feelings, must have done well.
I will not mention the plot here because it is, after all, a short story; but also the theme should be left for the readers to mull over and analyze themselves.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bittersweet story (in that way that Salinger always seems shallow, but you realize by the end it isn't) about love, loss and how it affects not only us but those around us.

[HR Habibur Rahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's like finding yourself back in your own child.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

read for ENGL 3210: Ghost Stories w/ Tony Earley

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salinger II

Walt and Jimmy,
the latter "gets hit" by a car,
then Walt and Mickey,
the latter "gets squished",
then tears and anguish.
The first one, of course, was dead all along.

Glass ought to have been Disney,
Mickeranno ought to have been Mouse.
Then I would not have been that careful with my grins.

[G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another tale of a white suburban housewife who from sone perspectives has accomplished & is living the American dream. But from her perspective has nothing. & how she’s handling this nothingness she feels.

[Elysa · Rating 5 out of 5]

a classic look at “the false illusions of the suburban dream.”

[Shireen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language is very bound in its time. It's a character sketch but the characters don't quite seem real.

[Pooria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolute nonsense

[Izar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Salinger empieza la historia de forma medio aburrida, pero al final se hace todo demasiado nostálgico.

[dais · Rating 3 out of 5]

false illusions of the american dream. suburban wives and widows. misogyny is briefly portrayed through ramona’s infatuation with her invisible jimmy jimereeno.

[PoisonFoxSoldierMan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a struggle to get through, not because it's as sad as people say, but because it's boring.

[rin rin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing story, how can he as a man explain so well the ambiance of a girl hanging out ?
Reminded me of perfect day for banana fish

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” J.D. Salinger’s “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” has a “light,” or comic title that belies some deeper concerns. Salinger, a WWII veteran, writes of a kind of lost postwar generation in these two opening stories from his Nine Stories (1953) collection; the first features Salinger’s stand-in, Seymour Glass, wearing his bathrobe on a beach in Florida, bantering with a sweet kid on the beach. On the surface he just seems goofy, but Seymour is in real mental trouble, he’s in trauma, he’s lost.

In “Uncle Wiggily” we again have this lightly comic title but the people we focus on in this story are two lost women, Eloise and Mary Jane, though the real amoral/mad center of the story is Eloise. The two women are having highball after highball, post-war, where what is barely submerged in the story are that almost all the men who are mentioned in their talk have been damaged by the war, the trauma, the war dead. And the ripple effect of this war trauma is that all society is damaged.
Eloise has a daughter, Ramona, has an imaginary boyfriend--funny, at first, but ultimately it is an image of missing or invisible men? It’s a commentary on the war, in those postwar vinyl, neon, life-of-the-party hysterical denialism years, post-Holocaust and Hiroshima? Oh, we’re fine, baby! Make me another drinky winky. Oh, we laughed! Oh, that man could make me laugh!

But Mary Jane suggests that escapist life-for-laughs may be a concern: “You know, that isn’t everything. I mean, that isn’t everything.” Many of the men in the stories are vets; Mary Jane’s former husband (for three months) was an airman who had stabbed an MP (Military policeman) and was imprisoned. The war is everywhere, as they talk, just pushed barely away from the surface.

And no, the kids are not all right. When we learn about vets we see they are like Seymour, driven a little mad, not yet ready for the prime time of societal living. One guy says he is advancing in the military in a different way; instead of accumulating ranks and medals for bravery, he’ll first have his uniform sleeves taken, then each part of the uniform, until he is naked with an infantry button in his navel. Funny ha ha?

Eloise is married to Lew, but he doesn’t even know she had a boyfriend, Walt,who was killed in the war. Oh, why talk about unpleasant things, girls! Have another drinky poo! But Eloise does suddenly cry about the loss. This is the best news we have heard about her, though she is stumbling drunk when she does it. Then Ramona comes in and we learn her imaginary boyfriend has been killed. Later, with Mary Jane passed out on the couch, it appears Eloise understands Ramona’s grief. In both stories the silly images of bananafish and Uncle Wiggily become images of lost, post-war innocence and trauma. Under the drunken banter is devastation, just so sad. So lost.

The suburban setting and the constant boozing to mask despair pairs well with John Cheever’s stories, and a later writer, Raymond Carver. But this is one terrific story.

[Jesús · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dos mujeres (Eloise y Mary Jane), amigas, se reunen en casa de Eloise. Allí mantienen conversaciones sobre el pasado de Eloise, el cual recuerda con gran nostalgia.

En la actualidad Eloise está deprimida y hastiada. Con su matrimonio, el cual sale perdiendo en comparación a un antiguo amor al que añora y que perdió prematuramente, pues un accidente en el ejército terminó con su vida.

En el presente, su hija Ramona tiene una relación con un ser imaginario, con dos en realidad; y es paradójico porque termina "matando" al primero para que no se moleste este segundo. Mientras que a su madre le gustaría, muy probablemente, cambiar la vida de su actual marido por la de su amor pretérito.

Añado este texto encontrado en un blog: "Ramona es la hija pequeña de Lew, una niña preescolar que es ejemplo de todo lo que su madrastra no es: es vital, enérgica e inocente. Recoge las cualidades típicas de una niña de su edad a pesar de vivir con una mujer que, además de no prestarle la atención necesaria, la desprecia. La consecuencia del abandono sufrido por la pareja de su padre, de la ausencia constante de este y de la falta de niños con los que jugar en su vecindario es que el personaje de Ramona gire en torno a su capacidad de crear un amigo imaginario llamado Jimmy J. o Jimmy Jimmereeno. Con él come, duerme, juega y expresa su soledad, que es casi total. La única persona con la que Ramona guarda un mínimo contacto es con Grace, la criada negra de la familia que lee La túnica sagrada [1942] (The Robe) y que podría ser quien alimenta la imaginación de la pequeña." — David Pierre

[Lila · Rating 4 out of 5]

ხომ არიან მწერლები, უბრალოდ რომ გრძნობ - ძალიან შენიანები არიან და მერე, რაც არ უნდა დაწერონ, ყველაფერი გიყვარდება. აი, ზუსტად ასეთი მწერალია ჩემთვის სელინჯერი, თავისი კოლფილდებით, გლასებით და სხვა საოცარი პერსონაჟებით. გლასების ოჯახის ერთ-ერთი წევრის აქ გამოჩენა არც გამკვირვებია, მართალია აქ არ ჩანს რომ ვოლტი გლასია, მაგრამ ისეთები არიან, ყველგან რომ ამოიცნობ - უცნაურები, გულთან ძალიან ახლოს რომ მოდიან.

დანაკარგი, საკუთარი ცხოვრების სიძულვილით გამოწვეული ილუზიები, პიროვნების ცვლილება და ამ ყველაფრის ეფექტი შვილზე - ეს პატარა მოთხრობა ბევრ რამეს იტევს.

ელოიზის დამოკიდებულება რამონას მიმართ, მათი გზა რეალობიდან გასაქცევად, სიმბოლოებში ჩატეული ტრაგედიები გულს ძალიან გატკენთ…

კიდევ ბევრ რამეს ვიტყოდი, მაგრამ არ მინდა სპოილერი გამომივიდეს, ამიტომ ყველას გირჩევთ მგზავრობისას, წვიმიან დღეს ჩაისთან ერთად ან უბრალოდ ნებისმიერ ადგილას, სელინჯერის საოცარ მოთხრობებს ჩაუსხდეთ. <3

[Brooksie Fontaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story, fundamentally, is about what happens when you find yourself in a life with no one you truly like or know, and realize you don't truly like or know yourself.

The affluent, pettily mean-spirited, alcohol-addicted Eloise treats everyone in the story with contempt except for her former college roommate, the only person whom she views as an equal. Her young daughter, her maid, and even her daughter's imaginary friends all fall victim to her scorn.

While reminiscing, she contemplates the man she truly loved but was denied the chance to be with, and comes the melancholic realization that she despises her life.

The child's imaginary friends are especially interesting, both of whom are male - echoes of the unseen male characters the women speak of. Even the maid's husband, who is in the kitchen, is not shown. It is, in many ways, an entirely female story.

[Tyffton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very concise story of a young mother in the ’50s whose old college friend comes over for a visit. They get drunk and laugh and talk constantly with a few interruptions from her little girl. The more drunk Eloise gets the more we hear about the past and the man she was in love with who died in the war. As the story unravels so does our main character, until at the end she both beautifully and frighteningly realizes… something? The end is open for interpretation but the eloquence of the slow breakdown was fascinating to read.
10/10

[Navdeep Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really feel for Eloise. She became this bitter person because of the loss of someone she cared for and loved, and she sees this naivety and innocence in her own daughter which makes her more bitter and jealous (?) even.

Because of Salinger’s own traumatic experience in WW2, he shows this theme of loss of innocence really well in his works

[Wizard of Gauze · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great short story. A dialogue pretty much entirely, but very masterful in the way it does so much with so little(the two main characters don’t even get off the couch for most of it).

Sad too. If I had a soul, this would definitely get the waterworks running and my eyes would be red for a couple of hours.

Would recommend.

[Dana Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

that's nice the uncle gave them the generic spoil sit to smell and spoil in. They had a house. They sit in it and smell cigarettes and alcohol and food and nice bed etc. and of course cry about the war and uncle wiggly and talk to a voice on the phone. decades and decades ago.

[Kathy Mitson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is so interesting to read this book in 2024. Things that a young woman, not yet even 25 would worry about, that are no longer worries or concerns. So self-involved ( as was expected of them) and so few cares outside the running of their households.
Unrelatable, but interesting all the same.

[Zeynep · Rating 4 out of 5]

Madem o kadar da sevmedim, niye bu kadar etkilendim??? Anlatmayıp hissettirdikleriyle güçlü bir öykü bu. If I didn't like it that much, why was I so affected by it? It's a powerful story, not through words, but through feelings.