J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [104]
The final words of the story are X’s assurance that he can reclaim his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact. They may also represent the rhythm of the watch, which readers are now convinced is only superficially damaged. This is Salinger’s acknowledgment of hope. It is his comfort for and reassurance to his fellow veterans.
In writing “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” it was necessary for Salinger to reach back into the events of his own past. That the story was written by a veteran who suffered the same traumatic stresses as those the narrative addresses gives “For Esmé” a certain moral authority. However, Salinger did not write the story as a personal recollection. Nor did he seek to draw attention to his own experiences. He instead grants authenticity through his own understanding. To those interested in Salinger’s life, an examination of the parallels between author and character is enticing, but such an inspection defies the spirit in which the story was written. Though we may recognize Salinger in Sergeant X’s character, veterans of the time recognized themselves.
The author’s deepest self-expression was not contained in the story’s dates, events, or settings at all but within a personal alignment with the emotional and spiritual postures of its characters. Esmé’s words in the teahouse on retaining compassion were echoes of Salinger’s own. In the spring of 1944, while based in Devon awaiting the D-Day invasion, he expressed the exact same determination to appear less cold and more compassionate to those around him.21 Like Sergeant X, Salinger lost sight of that resolve after the war. Here Esmé’s words call the author back to that resolution. In this way, Salinger himself partook of the healing that “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” provides.
*Salinger acknowledges Anderson’s influence in “Seymour—an Introduction” when he confesses that he had written a story “that had a good deal to do with Sherwood Anderson.” The reference may well allude to The Catcher in the Rye, but it is worded in such a way as to indicate a shorter work, leaving “The Laughing Man” as the best candidate.
*Elizabeth Murray’s daughter, Gloria, later recalled Salinger speaking at length about Hemingway a few months before this piece was written. At that time, Salinger claimed to be grateful that Hemingway had not continued their relationship.
9. Holden
The New Yorker featured “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” on April 8, 1950. After the crowded years of 1948 and 1949, Salinger published this single story between April 1949 and July 1951. “Esmé” was an immediate success. Readers recognized the tribute that it tendered and flooded Salinger with mail. On April 20, he marveled to Gus Lobrano that he had already received more mail for “Esmé” than for any other story he had written.1
Everyone waited in anticipation for his next release. Yet, at this recognized high point of his career, Salinger abandoned publishing anything until he had finished his beloved Holden Caulfield novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
The task was daunting. What Salinger had of his book was a tangle of disjointed short stories written as far back as 1941. As he had added to the manuscript over the years, his philosophy and outlook had shifted and changed, and the pieces of the novel that Salinger possessed in late 1949 held differing messages and themes. The challenge that lay before him was to weave all the strains together into a unified work of art.
In order to devote himself to the mission, Salinger cut himself off from distraction. He considered himself to be producing high art and consciously sought the refuge