I’ve been listening to misty-eyed Salinger fans sobbing about what an All-American Novel Catcher In The Rye was and feeling more than awkward about my guilty little secret: It’s not my favorite Salinger novel.

It’s good and all, but honestly I thought Salinger was a much better short-story writer than a novelist. And the only reason I say that is not that I have some kind of cutting insight or I hold the all-seeing knowledge of what makes a good short-story writer versus a novelist. It’s simply that I like his short stories better. I don’t think I’ve ever read a more delightful story than A Young Girl in 1941 With No Waist At All.

And that’s as may be, but as for his novels (although probably it should be considered a novela) I just love Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters. I read a review of it in The New York Times today, because everyone’s venting their opinions about Salinger this week, that was none too kind, and I had to wonder how closely he’d read it. Or how many times. I don’t think you can appreciate Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters until you’ve read it at least a half-dozen times, and you shouldn’t be writing a review of it for any newspaper, and especially not The New York Times, until you’ve taught a class on it. Or maybe I’ve just gone over the line. Yes, I see I have.

Obviously I haven’t taught a class on it or I would be able to pin down just why I like it so much. I love it mostly for Buddy Glass, the person I most wanted to grow up to be, a hermetic writer living in the woods with no phone, penning novels using a fountain pen and occasionally emerging to teach humanities at a local university.

And I loved it for the rest of the characters, too. Outrageous caricatures that they were, I just loved them. As much as everyone mentions the tiny top-hatted man, I have no idea what he’s supposed to be in the story. I love him but he’s a mystery to me. My favorite character, after Buddy, is the loud-mouthed Matron who dominates the dialog. Every time I meet someone like that, and goodness there are an awful lot of people like her, aren’t there, my imagination sucks me into a limousine with no air conditioning stuck in traffic on a New York street, and I blank out on everything else but the hell of what it would be like to spend an afternoon trapped like that.

Oh, I can see I’ll be up half the night reading it now. But that’s all right, it’s Friday. I can take a break from my must-finish book and re-read a little Salinger tonight.