J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [134]
That winter found Salinger blissful, cutting firewood and drawing water from streams. In this, the first home that he actually owned, he attempted to forge a life, not as an unresponsive malcontent but as a fully engaged member of the community. He envisioned Cornish as a place where he could write in peace, join with the world around him, and actually be happy. If Salinger did share Holden Caulfield’s dream, it was not a longing for seclusion but a dream of a place to call his own.
Cornish indeed had an amazing effect on him. After the depressed months of 1952, Salinger found there the most genuine happiness that he had experienced since before the war. He eagerly set himself to renovating his new property and making his hovel an actual home. Scraping together the last of his savings, he ordered repairs on the house, mended gaps in the structure, installed storm windows, and had work done on the grounds. He then set out to establish himself among his new neighbors.
The village of Cornish hugs the Connecticut River, which separates New Hampshire from Vermont. The hamlet itself has no real place where its citizens can gather, and the area’s social life is largely centered in the neighboring Vermont town of Windsor. Windsor too is a tiny community but contains a cluster of shops that, in this rural setting, passes for a business district. Among its establishments in 1953 were the coffee shops Harrington’s Spa and Nap’s Lunch, where the area’s high school students congregated. Salinger often crossed an ancient covered bridge into Windsor to pick up his mail and buy supplies, hoping to mingle with the townspeople as he did. With Harrington’s Spa and Nap’s Lunch among the shops he frequented, he inevitably encountered the Windsor High School students.
On November 20, 1952, Salinger had sat for the acclaimed portrait photographer Antony di Gesu. Salinger wanted a portrait of himself to give to his mother and, di Gesu claimed, his “fiancée.”*
Since I didn’t [know] as much then as I do now, I set up the camera and light and sat him right down. His expression was so rigid and self-conscious [that] I was at my wits end. Nothing happened. I decided on something I had never done before with an adult. I excused myself, went up to my apartment and came down with “Catcher in the Rye” … and suggested he do anything he pleased. Read to himself. Read aloud or just smoke … I took 48 5×7 negatives. Serious, thoughtful, smiling, laughing, howling with laughter.*
Di Gesu’s account reveals the child that still lived within Salinger at the time he moved to Cornish. Salinger’s ability to connect with the remnants of his own childhood was what had given him the insight to create the voice of Holden Caulfield.†
With such a background, Salinger naturally bonded with the local teenagers. In a short time he began to frequent the coffee shops, joining clusters of students, whom he often treated to food and drinks and engaged in conversations that sometimes lasted hours. On some days he allowed groups of adolescents to crowd into the jeep that he had bought for his house-hunting trip and would drive them to his home. There they discussed their lives. They talked of school, sports, and relationships, often while playing records and eating snacks. “He was just like one of the gang,” recalled a student, “except that he never did anything silly the way the rest of us did. He always knew who was going with whom and if anybody was having trouble at school and we all looked up to him, especially the renegades.”2
Despite being thirty-four and a famous author, Salinger was surprisingly comfortable among these young people, as if he were reliving his own adolescence through them—this time as the most popular member of the group. Yet, while