J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [20]
Vivacious and captivating, Oona O’Neill was someone whose beauty was often described as “haunting” and “mysterious.” Adding to her appeal, her father was America’s foremost playwright, a connection that certainly elevated her status in Salinger’s eyes. Yet though most descriptions raved about her looks, few ascribed to Oona any depth of character. She appeared to be a shallow, self-preoccupied rich girl. Some blamed her father. Eugene O’Neill had abandoned the family when Oona was barely two years old and had ignored her since, leaving her with an attention-craving personality and a frivolity exacerbated by her companions, Marcus and Vanderbilt. Elizabeth Murray’s daughter perhaps put it best when describing young Oona: “She was a blank,” Murray recalled, “but she was stunning in her beauty.”22 O’Neill was exactly the kind of girl whom Salinger had long claimed to despise. Perhaps, in some unfathomable way, that is why he fell so deeply in love with her.
To Salinger’s relief, Oona returned his interest, initially perhaps on account of his friendship with Whit Burnett, with whom her father had a working relationship. (Oona missed her father so much that she kept a scrapbook of him, reportedly so that she would not forget what he looked like.) Age sixteen, six years younger than her new admirer, she was possibly also intrigued by his relative maturity and his status as a published writer. From his comments and letters, it is clear that Salinger was under no illusions regarding her lack of depth—or the uneven nature of their relationship. “Little Oona,” Salinger grieved, was “hopelessly in love with little Oona.”23 Nevertheless, his feelings toward her were steadfast, and when they returned to New York, they began a romance that would affect the author for years to come.
In August, Salinger was back in New York but not at home on Park Avenue. Perhaps finding it difficult to work in his parents’ apartment, he holed up for two weeks in the Beekman Tower Hotel on East 49th Street, a short distance from Rockefeller Center. Although Salinger reported that his time at the Beekman had been unproductive, it resulted in a short story that he referred to as “The Lovely Dead Girl at Table Six” but that we know today as “Slight Rebellion off Madison,” Salinger’s first Caulfield story and a section of the novel he had been working on for the past year.24
After leaving the Beekman, Salinger sent the story to his agents at Ober Associates, where it received a lukewarm response. “A little slow,” they noted, “but nice atmosphere and kid’s viewpoint.”25
By May 1941, Salinger had also completed what would be his next published work, “The Heart of a Broken Story.” Few readers recognized the work as an attempt to satirize the stories being promoted by commercial magazines. It was a witty piece that parodied not only the recipe for short romances but the gangster movies popular at the time. The story also has a bleak and serious underside that displays the dilemma in which Salinger currently found himself: whether to strive for quality or salability. The tale begins as a typical boy-meets-girl story. Its main characters, Justin Horgenschlag and Shirley Lester, board the same Third Avenue bus on their way to work. Horgenschlag falls in love with Shirley at first sight and becomes frantic to go out with her. At this point, Salinger interrupts the narrative, explaining to the reader that he cannot continue the account as planned (intended—he points out—for Collier’s). The characters are simply too ordinary for the plot he has envisioned, and he cannot seem to get them “together properly.”26 After leading readers