Salinger (2013) is about the reclusive author of the 1951 ‘great American
novel’ Catcher in the Rye. It is an epic book of 698 pages – 575 pages of text
and 123 pages of annexes – that has taken nine years to research.
Jerome David Salinger (JD Salinger) was born on January 1, 1919 and died at
the age of 91 in 2010. Consequently, many sources have spoken of their
interactions with Salinger only since his death. It has black-and-white
photographs of Salinger (the cover is not the best one), how they were
acquired, a list of his fiction in chronological order, and the bios of his
fictional Glass Family, showing the similarities to the people in Salinger’s
real life. Therefore the biography has been described as ‘the most complete
picture of an American icon’ and ‘the world will not need another Salinger
biography.’
The format is unusual – not the conventional biographical format – because
it is an oral biography. Sources are directly quoted – name first and their own
words under sectional headings – and therefore the same person is quoted many
times when mentioning different periods in Salinger’s life. This format has
received much criticism – you either like it or you don’t. I like it. I like it
because it enables me to know the source, the context, the direct words – with no
middleperson interruptions, and without the biographers ‘hogging’ the pages
with their interpretations. In fact, this is just the way Salinger would have
liked it. As he told his short story course lecturer, Whit Burnett, ‘left on
your own, to know how the characters were saying what they were saying …
without any middlemen between.’
The format is in four parts reflecting his life as a soldier, a writer, a
married man, and a recluse following the guidance of the four stages of life
under the Advaita Vedanta Hinduism: (1) Apprenticeship (Brahmacharya), (2)
Householder Duties (Garhasthya), (3) Withdrawal from Society (Vanaprasthya),
and (4) Renunciation of the World (Sannyasa).
Salinger wrote short stories – ‘he was a short story guy’ said one source.
He published four books, but three of them were compilations of short stories.
He published one novel – The Catcher in the Rye – that took him 10 years to write,
and took America by storm. It was both a best seller, continuously near the top
of the 100 English-language books of all time, and the most censored book in American
high schools. He retreated from society, not seeking fame or fortune. He was
reclusive for 55 years. The authors’ goals are to answer three queries:
(1) why Salinger stopped writing, (2) why he disappeared, and (3) what had he
been writing for the past 45 years of his life?
Before the biography commences with Salinger’s early life, it begins in the
trenches in World World II as the 4th Division of the 12th Infantry Regiment
landed on Utah Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It tells of Salinger as a member
of the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), his 299 days in the war (out of
America’s 337 day of engagement), and his life as a war veteran with
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – called ‘battle fatigue’ in the 1940-60s.
The biography tells of Salinger’s writing routine, his literary influences,
his meetings with Ernest Hemingway, and his literary achievements. It tells of
his relationships with women, his obsession with girls ‘at the edge of their
bloom’, his two wives, his two children, and his dog. It tells of his reclusive
retreat in Cornish, New Hamshire, which he bought in 1953. And it tells of the
young men influenced by the book (this part is quite harrowing).
The premise of the biography is that ‘World War II destroyed the man but
made him a great artist. Religion provided the comfort he needed as a man but
killed his art.’ In fact, Salinger had not stopped writing; he stopped
publishing.
From 2015-2020 his estate will release unpublished works: eight new short
stories, a novel, and a novella. When these works are released, they will
undoubtedly reveal whether religion did indeed kill his art – or whether it was
the calmness he required to continue his creativity. Also undoubtedly there
will be much praise, much criticism, at least another bestseller, countless
articles and critiques, and another biography or two.
I have read the book by Salinger’s former live-in partner, At Home in the
World: A Memoir, by Joyce Maynard (1998) – when he was 53 and she was an 18-year-old
journalist, and I have read his daughter’s book, Dream Catcher: A Memoir (2000).
This biography surpasses them in content. Maynard and Salinger’s children
contribute to this biography, as well as people speaking for the first time. So
for now, this oral biography, is brilliant. I loved every word, from its ‘I
landed on Utah Beach on D-Day with the Fourth Division’ to ‘The wounds undid
him, and he went under.’
MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:-
The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends
(2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan
Curse (2009).
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