J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [153]
Other challenges, less common to new parents, foreshadowed problems of greater concern. For Claire and Salinger, Cornish suddenly seemed like a wilderness where the custody of an infant was a fearful thing. And Peggy was born in early December, a precursor to four months of the winter whose isolation and loneliness had hounded Claire the year before. As the days grew colder, the cottage must have seemed to shrink around her, making Claire into a prisoner once again. Intensifying her situation, the baby had naturally become the center of Salinger’s attention, and Claire likely found herself competing for her husband’s affections. Suddenly burdened with the inescapable duties of motherhood, Claire could be forgiven for beginning to resent her own child.3 In 1956, little was known of postnatal mood shifts; women suffered in silence, with feelings of guilt and confusion that often nearly overwhelmed them. Salinger’s letters of the period reveal that he was aware of his wife’s discomfort but only dimly.
As an infant, Peggy suffered a series of common childhood ailments that apparently baffled her parents. With the nearest hospital twenty miles away in Hanover, the Salingers admitted living in a constant state of terror.4 Although Salinger attempted to treat the child through prayer, Peggy was seldom in good health and cried constantly. Crowded in the cottage with a sullen wife and wailing child, Salinger found that he could not work. So, not long after Peggy’s birth, he made a decision that was professionally advantageous but personally disastrous.
Across the stream and about a hundred yards from the cottage, he built a small concrete structure as a private hermitage in which to write. His detached studio has often been referred to as his “bunker,” but the unit was surprisingly comfortable—if stark—and was not a refuge from others as much a place where his imagination could run free.
Salinger carved a subtle path through the meadow adjacent to the cottage. At the point where the meadow gave way to woods, the ground suddenly dropped, and the path transformed into a series of stepping-stones installed as a staircase. At this point, the ground leveled off and the path resumed, leading into an open field. Here, the sound of rushing water could be heard. Separating the field from the dark forest beyond was a flowing stream that contained a spring and small waterfall.* Over the stream Salinger constructed a simple wooden bridge, across which lay his retreat, built of green concrete cinder blocks to blend into the surroundings.
Within the bunker, a wood-burning stove warmed the cold New Hampshire winters. On sunny days, a generous skylight lighted the space. The building was furnished with a bed, shelves, a filing cabinet, and a long table that the author used as a desk and upon which his precious typewriter was enthroned.* Salinger did not use a chair. Instead, he had a tremendous leather car seat upon which he often sat in the lotus position. But the most magnificent aspect of Salinger’s sanctuary was the complication of its walls: they were strewn with an ever-increasing menagerie of notes. As the saga of the Glass family spilled from Salinger’s mind, one drop at a time, he would pen his ideas and post them around him. The personal histories of his characters, the genealogy of the Glass family, past and future story ideas, all found their position in the chaotic organization of Salinger’s chamber walls.
After completing the bunker Salinger developed a routine that he would maintain until very old age. He awoke at six thirty in the morning and meditated