Hapworth 16, 1924

rdf:langString Hapworth 16, 1924

rdf:langString "Hapworth 16, 1924" is a short story by the American author J. D. Salinger, the last original work published in his lifetime. It appeared in the June 19, 1965, edition of The New Yorker, infamously taking up almost the entire magazine. It is the "youngest" of Salinger's Glass family stories, in the sense that the narrated events happen chronologically before those in the rest of the series. Both contemporary and later literary critics harshly panned "Hapworth 16, 1924"; writing in The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it "a sour, implausible and, sad to say, completely charmless story .... filled with digressions, narcissistic asides and ridiculous shaggy-dog circumlocutions." Even kind critics have regarded the work as "a long-winded sob story" that many have found "simply unreadable", and it has been speculated that this response was the reason Salinger decided to quit publishing. But Salinger is also said to have considered the story a "high point of his writing" and made tentative steps to have it reprinted, though those came to nothing.