De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
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"De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is a short story that is part of the Nine Stories collection by J. D. Salinger. It was published in 1952.
It is warm and humorous in tone. It details a character's discovery as a newly hired (under false pretenses) art teacher of a rare artistic talent.
A tale told in the most humorous of styles, "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" is the story of a talented, yet pretentious young man who moves to Montreal to become an instructor for a correspondence "art academy". To do so, he feels compelled to embellish his credentials with extravagant accomplishments and an overly-chummy relationship with Picasso. While sneering at the childish attempts of his talentless mail-order "pupils", he falls in love with the artistic beauty of a religious painting submitted to him by his sole pupil of promise: an ageless, faceless nun. De Daumier-Smith has an epiphany that reveals the mystically inherent nature of beauty and value, allowing him to reinvent himself and transforms his life. Along with "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", this story is a short reflection of "Franny and Zooey".
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