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of his own inverted forest in order to reveal it. Reinforcing this self-image, his personal exploration of Zen Buddhism intensified while he was finishing The Catcher in the Rye. In 1950, he befriended Daisetz T. Suzuki, the renowned author and Zen master whose fascination with blending Christian mysticism into the expression of Zen ideas matched Salinger’s own. For Salinger, the combination of Zen philosophy with his own conviction that art was connected to spirituality resulted in a faith that equated writing with meditation, a faith that had begun on the battlefields of France when he had turned to his work as a source of spiritual sustenance. In the years since, he had discovered that Zen Buddhism fitted seamlessly into his personal belief system. It had helped to buffer the despondency he experienced after the war and had added balance to his writings.

After Salinger’s discomfort in the public eye during late 1949, his embrace of writing as a form of meditation was both fulfilling and natural, but it reinforced a situation in which he found it increasingly difficult to produce while under observation or scrutiny. Writing as meditation required isolation and total concentration. Once Salinger had embraced this method, he began to view the clamor of publicity and fame as keeping him from both his work and his prayer. Westport, therefore, became something of a personal monastery, a refuge in which he could connect the pieces of his Holden Caulfield book.

In 1961, Time magazine reported that Salinger had completed The Catcher in the Rye by isolating himself in “a sweatbox near the Third Avenue el” in some sort of self-imposed imprisonment.2 “He locked himself in there,” it claimed, “and ordered sandwiches and lima beans while he got the book out of himself.”3 Time’s depiction is fanciful and unlikely. Salinger was given to periods of loneliness, so although he had the opportunity to seclude himself at Westport when necessary, he considered it important to be within striking distance of New York City, where his friends and family lived, and it is probable that the “sweatbox” was actually an office at The New Yorker. The magazine frequently offered working space to its contributors, an arrangement that Salinger is known to have taken advantage of during the summer of 1950, when he used the offices of vacationing editors while completing The Catcher in the Rye.

Salinger was not completely alone when in Connecticut, either. There, he had Benny “for company and distraction.”4 Salinger was extraordinarily attached to the schnauzer. He enjoyed talking about the dog as much as a proud parent might speak of an only child. After everything they had been through together, from Germany to Connecticut, Benny alone, it seemed, understood his master. “You don’t have to take time to explain to a dog,” Salinger said, “even in words of one syllable, that there are times when a man needs to be at his typewriter.”5

As much as Salinger may have viewed writing as a spiritual exercise, he did not undertake his labor on pure faith. By the time he settled in at Westport and focused on completing his novel, he had already secured a publisher. In the autumn of 1949, an editor at Harcourt, Brace & Company, Robert Giroux, wrote to Salinger in care of The New Yorker and offered to publish a collection of his short stories. Salinger never answered Giroux’s letter but in November or December showed up unexpectedly at his office. According to Giroux, Salinger was not ready to publish a short-story collection. Instead, he offered the editor something rather more tantalizing:

The receptionist rang my desk to say that Mr. Salinger would like to see me. A tall, sad-looking man with a long face and deep-set black eyes walked in, saying, “It’s not my stories that should be published first, but the novel I’m working on.”6

“Do you want to sit behind this desk?” Giroux asked. “You sound like a publisher.” “No,” Salinger answered, “you can do the stories later if you want, but I think my novel about this kid in New York during the Christmas holidays should