Salinger as Preacher: Clear Speech and Childlike Enchantment

While we're on the topic of preaching pointers from surprising places...

Adam Gopnik's brief piece in the Feb. 8 issue of The New Yorker, makes some observations about the late J.D. Salinger's work which are extremely applicable to preaching. Gopnik writes:

"The message of [Salinger's] writing was always the same: that, amid the malice and falseness of social life, redemption rises from clear speech and childlike enchantment, from all the forms of unself-conscious innocence that still surround us...

Writing, real writing, is done not from some seat of fussy moral judgment but with the eye and ear and heart..."