Salinger
Authors: Paul Alexander
for Christopher Gines
for Lauren Alexander
for my family
and for James C. Vines III,
literary raconteur extraordinaire,
without whom this book would not exist
“Don’t you want to join us?”
I was recently asked by an acquaintance when he ran across me alone after midnight in a coffeehouse that was already almost deserted.
“No, I don’t,” I said.
FRANZ KAFKA
as quoted by Salinger in “Zooey”
Acknowledgments
After he was prevented from publishing
A Writer’s Life,
his biography of J. D. Salinger, Ian Hamilton deposited his entire Salinger research file in the
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Princeton University Library. Anyone can read the sizable file, which I did. As I studied the documents, I found much biographical material
Hamilton had not used in writing
In Search of J. D. Salinger,
the book about the controversy that he produced when the courts blocked the publication of
A Writer’s Life.
I
was also helped immensely by the
New Yorker
archive at the New York Public Library, which became open to the public after Hamilton published
In Search of J. D. Salinger.
Mine is
the first book to use this important archive as source material. In addition, I did research work in or was supplied with research material by various libraries at Columbia University, New York
University, and the University of Texas as well as the rare book and manuscript
collection at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the Gotham Book Mart, the
Library of Congress Copyright Office, and the alumni offices at Harvard University and Yale University. In the Clerk’s Office in the county courthouse in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, I
found Salinger’s divorce papers, which had not been studied by other biographers before. Finally, through various sources, I was able to piece together much of what was said in
Salinger’s deposition in
J. D. Salinger versus Random House and Ian Hamilton
—the only formal interview for which Salinger has ever sat.
As for secondary sources, I read
Advertisements for Myself
by Norman Mailer,
At Home in the World
and
Baby Love
by Joyce Maynard,
Chaplin
by David Robinson,
Charles Chaplin: My Autobiography
by Charles Chaplin,
Conversations with Capote
by Lawrence Grobel,
Dirty Little Secrets of World War II
by James F. Dunnigan and Albert
A. Nofi,
The Fiction of J. D. Salinger
by Frederick Gwynn and Joseph Blotner,
The Films of Susan Hayward
by Eduardo Moreno,
Genius in Disguise
by Thomas Kunkel,
Goldwyn
by A. Scott Berg,
Here at the New Yorker
by Brendan Gill,
Here But Not Here
by Lillian Ross,
In Search of J. D. Salinger
by Ian Hamilton,
J. D.
Salinger
by Warren French,
J. D. Salinger
by James Lundquist,
J. D. Salinger: An Annotated Bibliography
by Jack R. Sublette,
J. D. Salinger and the Critics
edited by
William Belcher and James Lee,
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
by Sylvia Plath,
Lolita
by Vladimir Nabokov,
Louise Bogan
by Elizabeth Frank,
Modern European History
by John Barber,
Salinger: A Critical and Personal Portrait
edited by Henry Grunwald,
Salinger’s Glass Stories as a Composite Novel
by Eberhand Alsen,
Translate This
Darkness
by Claire Douglas,
Trio: The Intimate Friendship of Carol Matthau, Oona
Chaplin, and Gloria Vanderbilt
by Aram Saroyan,
United States
by Gore
Vidal,
What I Know So Far
by Gordon Lish,
A Writer’s Life
(galleys only) by Ian Hamilton.
Several magazine articles were of great value, among them “In Search of the Mysterious J. D Salinger” by Ernest Havemann (
Life,
November 3, 1961); “J. D.
Salinger” by William Maxwell (
Book-of-the-Month Club News,
July 1951); “The Private World of J. D. Salinger” by Edward Kosner (
The New York Post Magazine,
April
30,1961); “Sonny: An Introduction” (
Time,
September 15, 1961); “Tiny Mummies!” and “Lost in the Whichy Thicket” by Tom Wolfe (
New York,
April
1965); “What I Did Last Summer” by Betty Eppes (
The Paris Review,
1981). For their interviews, research material, or other help, I’d like to thank William Abbe, N. Wade
Ackley, Paul Adao, Roberta Adao, Mark Alspach, A. Alvarez, Roger Angell, William Avery, Alex Beam, John Calvin Batchelor, A. Scott Berg, Naomi Bliven, Harold Bloom, Andreas Brown, Troy Cain, Robert
Callagy, Ann Close, Kathy Constantini, Richard D. Deitzler, Elizabeth Drew, James Edgerton, Leslie Epstein, Clay Felker, Ian Frazier, Dorothy B. Ferrell, Warren French, Frances Glassmoyer, Robert
Giroux, Jonathan Goldberg, Richard Gonder, Lawrence Grobel, Leila Hadley, Ian Hamilton, Lianne Hart, Edward W. Hayes, Susie Gilder Hayes, Samuel Heath, Anabel G. Heyen, Franklin Hill, Rust Hills,
Phoebe Hoban, Russell Hoban, William H. Honan, A. E. Hotchner, Peter Howard, Robert Jaeguers, Burnace Fitch Johnson, Richard Johnson, Elaine Joyce, Frances Kiernan, Mary D. Kierstead, Edward
Kosner, Thomas Kunkel, Penny Landau, Robert Lathbury, Gordon Lish, Rebecca Lish, Mary Loving, Gigi Mahon, Ved
Mehta, Daniel Meneker, Sylvia Miles, Gloria Murray, Norman
Nelson, Ethel Nelson, Katrinka Pellechia, George Plimpton, Paige Powell, Ron Rosenbaum, Jennifer Lish Schwartz, Jonathan Schwartz, Al Silverman, Dinitia Smith, Michael Solomon, Charles Steinmetz,
Roger Straus, Gay Talese, Joan Ullman, Amanda Vaill, Gus Van Sant, Daniel White, Maura Wogan, Tom Wolfe, and Ben Yagoda. For his friendship and advice I’d also like to acknowledge James
Ortenzio, someone who’s always there when he’s needed.
While I worked on this book, I wrote “Talk of the Town,” an article about Lillian Ross and William Shawn, and “J. D. Salinger’s Women” for
New York,
where
I’m lucky to have John Homans as my editor. It takes years to write a book, so as I’m working on one I often write for magazines. I’d like to thank my editors at the various
publications I work for who have supported me while I’ve written this book—Laurie Abraham, Tom Beer, Richard Blow, Robin Cembalest, Lisa Chase, Will Dana, Jessica Dineen, Milton
Esterow, Erika Fortgang, Mark Horowitz, Lisa Kennedy, Robert Love, Caroline Miller, Roberta Meyers, Nancy Novograd, and Maer Roshan. At Renaissance Books, I’d like to thank Bill Hartley and
Richard O’Connor as well as Arthur Morey whose notes, insights, and suggestions were invaluable. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to Betsy Cummings for assisting me in researching
Salinger’s life and work.
When J. D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield during the 1940s (he worked on some form of
The Catcher in the Rye
for ten years before it was published in 1951), he had
few models to look to. As critics have pointed out, the one character comparable to Holden in earlier American literature is Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain’s classic
The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
Holden is on a quest through New England, and then New York City, much as Huck is on a quest on the Mississippi River. Holden encounters the ugliness of the adult world much
as Huck confronts the shocking reality of racism and bigotry.
Huckleberry Finn
is the seminal coming-of-age novel in nineteenth-century American literature;
The Catcher in the Rye
occupies a similar place in the literature published after 1950.
Salinger has become such a notable literary figure that he actually appears as a character in W. P. Kinsella’s
Shoeless Joe,
the novel on
which the picture
Field of Dreams
was based, but his importance can best be measured in the way
Catcher
has influenced books that have been written after it.
Last Summer
by Evan Hunter,
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath,
The Last Picture Show
by Larry McMurtry,
The Basketball Diaries
by Jim Carroll,
A Separate Peace
by John Knowles,
Birdy
by
William Wharton,
Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis,
Bright Lights, Big City
by Jay McInerney,
Girl, Interrupted
by Susanna Kaysen—these are just a few books
written in the tradition of
The Catcher in the Rye.
But Salinger’s novel has had an effect on areas of American society besides literature. As the rebellious 1950s gave way to the radical 1960s, a youth culture emerged in the United States.
That “youthquake,” as some have called it, continued to define American popular culture during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Because of this,
Catcher
has had an impact on
different parts of American culture. A host of films—
Rebel Without a Cause, American Graffiti, Dead Poets Society, Summer of ’42, Stealing Home, Risky Business, Running on Empty,
Dirty Dancing, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, The Graduate, Stand By Me,
and
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
are only a few—could not have been made in the way they were if
Catcher
had not existed as a model before them. Indeed, one could argue that the entire teen-movie subgenre, which has become a staple of the film industry in Hollywood, owes a debt to
Holden and
Catcher.
So does much of television’s youth-oriented programs, as exemplified by series like
The Wonder Years, James at 15, My So-Called Life, Dawson’s
Creek,
and
Felicity.
And how different is the angst articulated by Holden from that expressed in the music and lyrics of Green Day or Jewel or Smashing Pumpkins? Is there any area
of American popular culture that’s
not
been touched by Holden and what he has come to represent?
With Holden, Salinger prefigured the juvenile delinquency of the 1950s, the “drop-out” mentality of the 1960s generation, and the general disquiet among much of today’s youth.
With Holden, Salinger foresaw the generation gap that emerged in the 1960s and, to a certain extent, never disappeared. Holden has become, then, a lasting symbol of restless American youth. Today,
Holden’s nervous breakdown at the end of the novel seems absolutely contemporary in a society whose youth are as troubled, as jaded, and yet as defiantly hopeful, as they ever have been
before. Consequently, it would be hard to overestimate the importance of the contribution Salinger made to American culture when he decided to write a novel about this “crazy” neurotic
boy who flunks out of prep school, sets out on a short but strange odyssey to avoid going home to confront his parents, and, as he does, learns fundamental lessons about life, loss, and self.
It was a beautiful afternoon in early October 1994 and I had driven up from New York City to Cornish, New Hampshire, a town which for all intents and purposes does not exist.
There are no business establishments to speak of in Cornish, only a general store on the side of the road and, not too far away, a white wooden meeting house situated near a building that serves as
the volunteer fire department headquarters. Indeed, in Cornish, the only element of a town that
does
exist is a scattering of houses built here and there among the rolling wooded hills. Of
course, the most asked-about house of all of these, I discovered once I found it, could not be seen clearly from the dirt road that passed by the entrance to its driveway, an entrance marked by two
prominently displayed
NO TRESPASSING
signs. The house, true to the press reports that have been published about it through the years,
is of a chalet
style. It is neither cramped nor ostentatious but functional, and in October 1994 it had been, for well over two decades, the home of J. D. Salinger, the great American novelist and recluse. While
I sat in my car on the side of the road and looked up at the house, much of which was blocked by foliage, I had the strangest feeling. What I felt—even though I could not confirm it—was
that as I was watching the house someone inside it was watching
me.