Salinger

by David Shields

  “Me? I don’t know.”

  “Sow the old wild oats, I guess, huh?”

  “I don’t getcha,” Jameson said.

  “You know. Chase around. Joe College stuff.”

  “Naa. I don’t know. Not much.”

  DAVID SHIELDS: Salinger told Burnett that if “The Young Folks” became a play, he wanted to portray the character William Jameson, since he was good at underacting.

  JAY NEUGEBOREN: For a writer to be published in Story at that time, especially for a young writer who’d never been published before, gave the writer a self-confidence that we (and I think of myself as one of them) need to keep going. It validated them. It said, “You are a writer. You will be published. Keep going.”

  J. D. SALINGER (“The Young Folks,” Story, March–April 1940):

  Edna shifted her position at the railing. She lighted the remaining cigarette in her case. Inside, somebody had turned on the radio, or the volume suddenly had increased. A girl vocalist was huskying through the refrain from that new show, which even the delivery boys were beginning to whistle. No door slams like a screen door.

  DAVID SHIELDS: When the story appeared, Salinger’s contributor’s note read, “J. D. Salinger, who is twenty-one years old, was born in New York. He attended public grammar schools, one military academy, and three colleges, and has spent one year in Europe. He is particularly interested in playwriting.”

  SHANE SALERNO: In spring 1940, Salinger said that he “tried acting for a while . . . but I stopped because my writing is more important.”

  PAUL ALEXANDER: Salinger had found the subject matter about which he was supposed to write. He’d been searching for a special character or milieu; much of this process of discovery was unspoken, even accidental. Then he came to understand that his unique vehicle for analyzing the world and making distinctive fiction was Holden Caulfield.

  Just before the summer of 1940, Salinger realized he needed to get away. In the early days of the summer of 1940, Salinger headed out of Manhattan. On August 8, he mailed a postcard to Whit Burnett from Murray Bay, a charming resort in Quebec, telling him he was working on a long short story—a departure for Salinger, since his stories tended to be relatively short. On [September] fourth, he wrote Burnett to say he had decided to try an autobiographical novel; naturally, he would show it to Burnett first.

  DAVID SHIELDS: In a September 6, 1940, letter to Elizabeth Murray, from a hotel in Murray Bay, Salinger wrote, “From the people I’ve met in my petty wanderings I’ve come to the conclusion that there must be a God. So many magnificent monsters could never perform so many magnificent blunders so regularly and eternally, etc—by sheer accident.”

  SHANE SALERNO: “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” was Salinger’s first story focused on Holden Caulfield. Holden has not been expelled; he has just come home from Christmas vacation. He has a middle name, Morrisey, that never surfaces again.

  IAN HAMILTON: In a letter to a friend, he admits without equivocation that the boy-hero Holden Caulfield is a portrait of himself when young.

  PAUL ALEXANDER: As he had with “The Young Folks,” he wanted to write about rich, jaded teenagers from Manhattan. This time Salinger had come up with a new character around whom to focus the story, an animated yet neurotic teenage boy from the Upper East Side with the unusual name Holden Caulfield.

  J. D. SALINGER (“Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” The New Yorker, December 21, 1946):

  “Hey, Carl,” Holden said, “you’re one of these intellectual guys. Tell me something. Supposing you were fed up. Supposing you were going stark, staring mad. Supposing you wanted to quit school and everything and get the hell out of New York. What would you do?” . . .

  “I’m in bad shape. I’m in lousy shape. Look, Sally. How would you like to just beat it? Here’s my idea. I’ll borrow Fred Halsey’s car and tomorrow morning we’ll drive up to Massachusetts and Vermont and around there, see? It’s beautiful. I mean it’s wonderful up there, honest to God. We’ll stay in these cabin camps and stuff like that till my money runs out. I have a hundred and twelve dollars with me. Then, when the money runs out, I’ll get a job and we’ll live somewhere with a brook and stuff.”

  SHANE SALERNO: A little more than ten years later, Salinger had his New Hampshire cabin and brook and stuff.

  —

  DAVID SHIELDS: In the summer of 1941, Salinger was living with his parents in their Park Avenue apartment. His friend from prep school William Faison took him to Brielle, New Jersey, to visit his older sister, Elizabeth Murray, who introduced Salinger to Oona O’Neill. Salinger was floored by her beauty. He soon told Elizabeth that he was “crazy about Oona.”

  Oona O’Neill, age sixteen, New York City.

  OONA O’NEILL: I knew he’d be a writer. I could smell it.

  JANE SCOVELL: When she walked into a room, she just took people’s breath away.

  Salinger had a lot of things going for himself, too. He was handsome. He was well-spoken. He was intelligent. He was published. He was everything. One thing’s for sure: they would have been damned attractive as a couple.

  DAVID SHIELDS: Oona was impressed that Salinger was an up-and-coming writer who had published in Story, Esquire, and Collier’s.

  SHANE SALERNO: Oona O’Neill was the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, who had won the Nobel Prize in Literature five years earlier.

  DAVID SHIELDS: She had grown up with a writer who was a friend of Whit Burnett—Salinger’s teacher at Columbia and the editor of Story.

  LEILA HADLEY LUCE: She was original. She wasn’t like everyone else. I think this is why Salinger liked her so much, because the one thing she was never guilty of was any clichés or any banalities. She was totally original.

  A. SCOTT BERG: It must have been a living hell to be a child or spouse of Eugene O’Neill. I can hardly imagine what that would have been like—to have lived with what was clearly an extremely dark soul.

  Oona O’Neill’s father, the Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O’Neill, and family.

  JANE SCOVELL: Eugene O’Neill was a genius—completely dedicated to his work—and a really rotten father. He wasn’t interested in children and he always said his real children were the characters in his plays.

  ARAM SAROYAN: When Oona was very young, Eugene O’Neill, who had been drinking heavily, went off with a woman named Carlotta Monterey, who would become his lifelong amanuensis and manager. O’Neill essentially left Oona, along with Shane, her older brother.

  JANE SCOVELL: Oona’s father walked out on her when she was three. She was crazy about him, and when she saw his picture in newspapers, she’d start crying. Her mother would try to console her, but the child was almost inconsolable. Being the daughter of a celebrated person, especially someone celebrated for his art like O’Neill, is pretty burdensome. For Oona, it wasn’t, “Oh, Daddy’s home, I can run and hug him and kiss him.” It was, “Daddy’s locked up in his room. He’s working. Keep quiet.” It was a rather tortured and not very happy childhood, I’m afraid.

  SHANE SALERNO: Jerry Salinger and Oona agreed to see each other when they returned to Manhattan. They went to museums, movies, and plays; they met for dinner at cafés and restaurants and took long walks through Central Park, past the ducks that Salinger would immortalize a decade later in The Catcher in the Rye. That summer Salinger fell deeply in love with Oona.

  Oona O’Neill.

  JOYCE MAYNARD: Jerry talked a lot about New York, the New York of his youth and his time with Oona O’Neill. He had quite a time in New York for a person who ultimately disavowed it.

  LEILA HADLEY LUCE: Salinger and O’Neill made a gorgeous couple. He cut a dashing figure, with his dark good looks, his perfect posture, his thin athletic build. She was a radiant, classic beauty with extraordinary grace.

  JANE SCOVELL: One of the things that attracted Oona to Salinger was the fact that he was a deep thinker and was interested in the problems adolescents have. Her adolescence, unlike his, was truly miserable. She came fro
m a level of sorrow that breeds empathy. She was particularly empathetic toward men—older men—which really came out of her desire to have her father with her. Indeed she craved his company.

  DAVID SHIELDS: Eugene O’Neill’s absence was the formative event of Oona O’Neill’s life.

  A. SCOTT BERG: Oona O’Neill was someone who was clearly attracted to genius, and she knew it when she saw it.

  JANE SCOVELL: Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen Oona O’Neill dated [New Yorker cartoonist] Peter Arno, Orson Welles, and then J. D. Salinger. It’s interesting to think of a sixteen-year-old girl holding such fascination for such an illustrious group of men. But remember, we’re talking about a young woman who was intellectually astute, beautiful, shy, loving. Quite an extraordinary young woman with a lot of things to offer these particular men.

  GERALDINE McGOWAN: Salinger seems to be attracted to damaged women. He had a sixth sense for them. Oona O’Neill was damaged. I believe he loved her, as much as he could love any woman, but his image of what women are impedes him from truly knowing them. He so strongly has this sense that women don’t break. I think that’s why he chooses damaged women, even if he doesn’t recognize it.

  JANE SCOVELL: After school Oona would do her homework and then she’d go to the Stork Club. The Stork Club was very clever to use this beautiful, intelligent, and well-known young woman as a symbol of their club. It was a very good advertising ploy to show everybody that this is where the daughter of our only Nobel Prize–winning playwright was hanging out. So much so that the headmistress of the Brearley School wrote a note to one of her teachers, saying, “Why is Miss O’Neill in the Stork Club? She’s sixteen!” They always photographed her with a glass of milk because, of course, she was underage. Still, “teenager” is a funny word to use for somebody like Oona, because she’s one of those people who was an old soul. She was very voluptuous as a young girl; I think she began to develop at around thirteen.

  The Stork Club, New York City.

  LEILA HADLEY LUCE: The Stork Club was the place to be seen in New York City. You couldn’t walk in that club without seeing movie stars, politicians, even royals from Europe. It was at the Stork Club that Prince Rainier courted Grace Kelly. You always got to see who was there each night because their pictures were in the papers the next day.

  You had people like Oona, Gloria [Vanderbilt], and Carol Marcus. They were wealthy. You have to give them a little credit, though. A lot of them had brains. These girls’ escapades were in the headlines: “Just look what Gloria Vanderbilt’s doing today! And, oh my! Look at Oona O’Neill!” We like to put them down and say, “Ah, dopey!” but they had brains.

  STORK CLUB REGULAR: The show consists of common people looking at the celebrities and the celebrities looking in the mirrors, and they all sit popeyed in admiration.

  JOHN LEGGETT: The three of them—Carol Marcus, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Oona O’Neill—were highly sophisticated girls about town. Although they were teenagers, they really knew how to deal with men, and all of them were focused on meeting and marrying someone rich and famous.

  ARAM SAROYAN: Carol, Gloria, and Oona were the prettiest, most dazzling girls of their generation in the New York debutante scene. In their various ways, all three were orphans. They huddled together and became co-conspirators in making their lives together. That’s the nice thing about it: each of these young women was looking for a father or guardian to usher them into their adult lives. They weren’t necessarily looking for contemporaries, for life partners, as other young women might have been. It was a crazy generation of these injured, beautiful, and not quite actualized ladies—kind of a sad story underneath all the glitz.

  Oona O’Neill at a nightclub in New York.

  Here she was, the famous Oona O’Neill of the Stork Club. Jerry Salinger, this young writer she knew, would give her a big song-and-dance about how tacky and insincere the Stork Club was, how they were only trying to boost their attendance at her expense. This only confirmed his worst fears of her superficiality. She wasn’t ready to cherish his sacred love. Well, she knew what he was interested in, and it was pretty much the same thing every other boy and man she knew was interested in. That being the case, she might as well marry someone rich and famous. She could see Jerry getting upset by such thoughts. His idea was she was supposed to be madly in love with the fact that he was a writer. Well, her daddy was a writer, too. And most writers made terrible husbands as well as terrible fathers, according to her most intimately detailed information.

  JANE SCOVELL: Sometimes Salinger would get a little irritated with Oona, probably because she wasn’t giving him as much attention as he wanted.

  J. D. SALINGER (The Catcher in the Rye):

  Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass. I broke it, though, the same week I made it—the same night, as a matter of fact.

  SHANE SALERNO: In the fall of 1941, writing to Elizabeth Murray, Salinger called Oona “Bright, pretty and spoiled”; one month later, she is “cute as hell.” Then “Little Oona’s hopelessly in love with little Oona and as we all know and shout from convenient housetops, I’ve been carrying a torch for myself these twenty-odd years—Ah, two beautiful romances.”

  ARAM SAROYAN: She was beautiful and Salinger loved her, adored her. Thought she was terrific and superficial. And was very annoyed at her superficiality! Typical writer, I guess.

  J. D. SALINGER (The Catcher in the Rye):

  Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.

  —

  SHANE SALERNO: Salinger had the agent Jacques Chambrun submit one story before he switched to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s agency, Harold Ober, where Salinger became a client of Dorothy Olding; they would work together for the next fifty years. Esquire turned down “Go See Eddie,” praising its “competent handling”; to Burnett, Salinger wrote that this “was like saying, ‘She’s a beautiful girl, except for her face.’ ”

  PAUL ALEXANDER: Through his agent, Salinger had been submitting stories to the New Yorker for some time, all to no avail. On March 17, 1941, he submitted his story “The Fishermen” to John Mosher at the magazine. On Salinger’s cover letter, someone at the magazine had written in large block letters the word “NO,” then circled it.

  The New Yorker’s rejection of Salinger’s story “The Fisherman.”

  PAUL ALEXANDER: The New Yorker rejected the next several stories: “Lunch for Three” (Mosher: “There is certainly something quite brisk and bright about this piece”), “Monologue for a Watery Highball,” “I Went to School with Adolph Hitler,” “Paula,” and “The Lovely Dead Girl at Table Six.”

  DAVID SHIELDS: Salinger asked Dorothy Olding to send “Slight Rebellion Off Madison” to the New Yorker, which accepted it in November 1941 and probably planned to run it very soon, as it was a Christmas story. Salinger had fulfilled a dream, breaking into the New Yorker at just twenty-two. He wrote to William Maxwell, who would be editing the story, and told him he’d written another story about Holden but wasn’t going to send it in just yet.

  PAUL ALEXANDER: For Salinger, to be in the New Yorker was to be accepted by the part of the literary community he cared about: people who worried about good writing, who wanted to make the writing as good as it could be. For Salinger, it meant that as a writer he had arrived.

  SHANE SALERNO: On November 18, 1941, Salinger wrote to a young woman in Toronto, Marjorie Sheard, to inform her that he had a new piece coming soon in the New Yorker. He described the story as being about “a prep school kid on his Christmas vacation.” He indicated that his editor wanted an entire series on the character but that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to go in this direction.

  J. D. SALINGER, excerpt from letter to Marjorie Sheard, November 18, 1941:

  I’ll try a couple more, anyway . . . and if I begin to miss my mark I’ll quit.

  SHANE SALERNO: Salinger concluded the letter by asking for Marjorie’s reaction to “th
e first Holden story.”

  —

  FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan.

  Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, “a date that will live in infamy.”

  New Yorkers responding to the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  THOMAS KUNKEL: When World War II broke out, the editors at the New Yorker felt that “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” this story about a young man and his personal rebellion, seemed trivial and beside the point. It didn’t seem appropriate to publish it in the magazine, so the editors put it on the shelf.

  EBERHARD ALSEN: Four days after Pearl Harbor, Salinger wrote a letter to his literary mentor Whit Burnett and referred to “the sneaky bombing last Sunday.” He also mentioned that he immediately went to enlist in the army, but because of a slight heart ailment, he was “classified I-B with all the other cripples and faggets.” In the same letter, he says that “money is a far greater distraction for an artist than hunger,” and—after the New Yorker had decided, following Pearl Harbor, not to publish “Slight Rebellion”—complains that “somebody’s going around hollowing out all my little victories.”

  DAVID SHIELDS: The I-B classification was given to those fit for only limited military service. “Cripples and faggets” is enormously telling of Salinger’s self-assessment, because the “slight heart condition” was almost certainly a convenient fiction to disguise the existence of a congenital deformity. While researching Salinger’s second meeting with Hemingway, which would take place in 1944 in the Hürtgen Forest, we discovered an unreported detail about Salinger’s physical condition. Werner Kleeman, who served with Salinger, told members of the Queens College WWII Alumni Veterans Project of the City University of New York that he heard Salinger tell Hemingway “that he didn’t think the army would take him . . . [because] he had only one testicle.” According to Kleeman, Hemingway told Salinger, “Those doctors were such fool[s]. With a touch of the finger, they could have put your other testicle down.” Kleeman said, “Salinger must have been all his life with one testicle.”