J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [102]
My Foolish Heart was attacked by critics for being overly sentimental, and Salinger doubtless held hopes that it would simply fade away. But no such thing happened. The film became widely popular, and Susan Hayward received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Eloise. Also earning a nomination was the film’s theme song, composed by Victor Young. It remains a well-known standard today.
In 1949, Salinger reached heights of literary success and fulfilled aspirations of which he had long dreamed. However, his autobiographical profile for Harper’s and his lecture at Sarah Lawrence College revealed his reluctance for center stage, while the film adaptation of “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” taught him the artistic price often paid for popularity. Still, his ambition prevailed.
By October, Salinger and Benny had moved from their comfortable barn studio in Stamford into a house on Old Road in Westport, Connecticut, the same town in which Scott Fitzgerald had begun work in 1920 on his novel The Beautiful and Damned. Once settled in, Salinger described his new home as “snug and right to work in,” the ideal place to resume his novel.17 The unfinished Catcher had been his companion for the past decade, and he wanted very badly to see it finished. Before he could devote himself to that task, he needed to purge himself of another unfulfilled commitment.
In 1945, Salinger had decided that his fellow veterans “deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret.”18 It can be argued that he began that melody with “The Stranger” or certainly “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and added to it with succeeding stories; but before allowing himself to move on with his novel, he felt compelled to complete that melody. The result was “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” widely considered one of the finest literary pieces to result from the Second World War.
In all likelihood Salinger had already completed the original draft of “For Esmé” when he moved to Westport. When it was returned by The New Yorker, Salinger was compelled to rework it. In February 1950, he reported to Gus Lobrano that the story had been shortened by six pages.19 This edited version stands among Salinger’s tightest works and shows an attention to detail reminiscent of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” When released by The New Yorker two months later, there was little doubt in the minds of readers that Salinger had produced his finest work to date.
The goals of “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” are “to edify, to instruct.”20 Through this story, Salinger sought to inform the civilian world of the lingering traumas borne by the soldiers in the Second World War. Yet its major purpose is to serve as a tribute to those soldiers themselves and as a lesson on the power of love to overcome what they had endured. This is Salinger’s “trembling melody,” his homage to his fellow soldiers. In crafting the story, Salinger reached deep into the events of his own life, producing an inspiration that only a veteran could deliver.
The story appeared in an age of unquestioned patriotism and increasing conformity. Five years after the war’s end, the reality of the experience was receding into the background of public consciousness and being replaced by a more romantic notion. This ordered romance left no room for the inglorious messiness of post-traumatic stress disorder. For most ex-soldiers, shame and misunderstanding restrained any expression of the trauma they grappled with daily. They suffered in silence. Through “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” Salinger spoke for those men as no one else had.
“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” is narrated by someone who sounds suspiciously like Salinger himself: a writer who served in Europe as an intelligence sergeant during the Second