J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [21]
In “The Heart of a Broken Story,” Salinger begins his refusal to create his characters artificially, declining to force them to be romantic or heroic. By satisfying neither commercial nor “serious” requirements, the story challenges readers to make their own decisions. Is “The Heart of a Broken Story” actually “The Story of a Broken Heart”? Will they continue to accept the happy fluff being peddled by the popular magazines or begin to demand less cheerful but more believable alternatives? The author’s decision is plain. If readers of “The Heart of a Broken Story” expect a happy ending, they will be sorely disappointed.
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“The Heart of a Broken Story” was published in September 1941, not in Collier’s, as Salinger had expected, but in Esquire, an edgier publication geared mainly to men. For all the story’s humor, its skeptical conclusion demonstrated that Salinger was unwilling to abandon serious literature. Yet, at the same time, he recognized that he needed to support himself. So he made a conscious decision to separate his writings between those containing introspection and nuance and the more marketable works that could earn him a quick, easy buck.
Salinger often poked fun at his commercial stories, such as “The Hang of It,” lacking in quality but easily sold to popular magazines. However, there was one magazine whose recognition Salinger desired above all others and to which he refused to submit minor stories, regardless of the outcome. That magazine was The New Yorker, the most respected and financially rewarding literary venue to which an author could aspire.
Now a professional writer, Salinger became increasingly uneasy. Somehow, his daily life did not measure up to his achievements and there was little he could point to in proof that he had actually “made it.” He was still living at home with his parents, a situation that was becoming increasingly intolerable. His romance with Oona O’Neill was incomplete and conducted largely at her discretion. And he was dissatisfied with the circulation and presentation of his stories, the best of which had been reined in by their limited distribution while his least significant had gained the greatest exposure. Salinger saw The New Yorker as a solution to all his problems. If he could persuade it to publish another of his more incisive, quality stories, he would attain the respectability that he felt he deserved, impress Oona O’Neill, and begin to alter his daily situation.
By the time “The Heart of a Broken Story” was published, Salinger had completed his darkest work yet, “The Long Debut of Lois Taggett.” The tale of a debutante and her long, strange process of coming out, this bleak story once again revolves around upper-class young people. In it Salinger equates fashionable trends with phoniness and a lack of values. Throughout the story, Lois struggles to deal with the harshness of reality while inching toward some level of compassion. Before she can let go of pretense, she must first deal with a psychotic husband, a loveless second marriage, and her child’s crib death.
Despite the story’s many oddities (Lois’s husband, for example, suffers from a bizarre allergy to colored socks), Salinger was convinced it would allow him to break through onto the pages of The New Yorker.27 As soon as it was completed, he instructed Dorothy Olding to submit it to the magazine.
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By late 1941, Salinger was producing stories in rapid succession, each an experiment designed to both find his own writing style and distinguish what was salable to various magazines. To his disappointment, “The Long Debut of Lois Taggett” was rejected by The New Yorker, and Salinger sent it on to Mademoiselle, indicating a definite decline in ambition.28 In