J.D. Salinger: A Life
by Kenneth Slawenski
Random House
Is it possible to separate the artist’s sins from his art — or is it best to turn a blind eye to his private life and enjoy his creations as is? Does knowing too much about Woody Allen or Mel Gibson take away from our appreciation of “Annie Hall” or “Braveheart”?
In the case of J.D. Salinger, author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” which has sold more than 35 million copies since 1951, the things we know about the famously reclusive man do more harm than good to our understanding of his work. It didn’t help the reading of “Nine Stories” to hear his daughter, Margaret Salinger, reveal that her father drank urine, spoke in tongues and took on teenage pen-pals. Nor did it enhance “Franny and Zooey” when his much younger ex-lover Joyce Maynard wrote about his strange sexual proclivities and obsession with purging unhealthy food.
But while the stories from Margaret Salinger and Maynard saddle the reader with too much, Kenneth Slawenski’s new biography of the author “J.D. Salinger: A Life,” the first bio to hit shelves after Salinger’s death last year, suffers from too little.
Slawenski, who also runs a Salinger-themed blog, avoids the dirt and largely dismisses the ex-lover and daughter (the two closest people to Salinger who have written books). And, like many who have written about Salinger before him, Slawenski can’t rely on interviews. Most people closest to Salinger have sworn to never talk to the media — which Salinger despised — and they’ve kept that promise.
Slawenski also doesn’t quote liberally from Salinger’s letters and work because of the author’s strict copyright policies. Even from the grave, the zealously litigious hermit won a half-victory just last week when the Swedish author who wrote a “sequel” to “Catcher” agreed not to publish the book until the original hits the public domain, though he’s allowed to publish outside North America and Canada.
As a result, Slawenski steps lightly, paraphrasing Salinger’s key works and indirectly quoting and summarizing his private letters.
Despite these many hindrances, Slawenski has produced a well-researched tribute — albeit a bit of a vanilla one — revealing Salinger’s deep insecurities as a writer, his oversized ego and his passion for his fictional characters.
Jerome David Salinger, called “Jerry” by his friends, was born in 1919 to a upper-middle class Jewish family (his mother converted to Judaism, originally being a Midwestern girl of German descent) in New York City.
Much like the “Catcher” narrator Holden Caulfield, Salinger dropped out of a slew of schools and colleges, attending Valley Forge Military Academy (inspiration for the school in “Catcher”) and dropping out of NYU, Ursinus College and Columbia. But he was not the ne’re-do-well rebel like Caulfield, instead, he was active in school life, acting in plays, editing the yearbook and was even a glee club nerd.
His classmates took issue with his “nasty” affect; even then he knew he was destined to write the “Great American Novel.”
“He always talked in a pretentious manner, as if he were reciting something out of Shakespeare,” a classmate recalled. He also took to calling people “phonies” (Caulfield’s signature epithet).
Salinger’s most harrowing experience — and the book’s most interesting portion — occurs during World War II. He saw more than his fair share of combat, witnessing the catastrophe at Slapton Sands (called Operation Tiger), battling on the beaches of Normandy and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.
“You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely,” Salinger told his daughter.
In Germany, he married his first wife and quickly divorced her after moving back to New York. Details about this woman are scant because he later refused to acknowledge her existence. After gaining maturity in his writing after the war, Salinger’s career flourished — finally gaining the long-sought respect of The New Yorker.
He completed “Catcher” in 1950 and was immediately hit by the oppression of instant success. He avoided cameras, refused to divulge details of his life to bios, and lived in constant fear of the media, which had become obsessed with the elusive author. To escape it all, he moved to Cornish, NH, took on a younger wife, and had two children, while devoting most of his waking hours to writing, shuttering himself away from his family in a writing bunker for hours.
He released “Nine Stories,” “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” In 1965, he published “Hapworth 16, 1924” — it was his last.
Although many witnesses insist that Salinger spent most of his time writing — and his daughter even insisted that she saw finished manuscripts — why did he stop publishing?
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” Salinger told a reporter. “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”
This may be true, but Slawenski also believes that Salinger was possibly unable to handle the criticism of his work, especially his last two, which were almost universally panned by critics. Nevertheless, Slawenski estimates that there are 15 novels in Salinger’s bunker that are ready for publication. If true, this fact, more than any memoir or biography, will add to our collective understanding of the mythical author who devoted his life to his art.