J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [229]
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If we choose to examine—indeed to judge—the life of J. D. Salinger, we must first accept the obligation to view his life in all its complexities: to recognize the valiant soldier within him as well as the failed husband, the creative soul that gave way to the self-protective recluse.
There is something within the human character that compels us to cast down the idols we ourselves have elevated. We insist upon exalting those we admire beyond the reality of their virtues and then, as if resentful of the heights we have forced upon them, feel it necessary to cut them down. It may be within our character to smash our own idols, but that same character is in constant longing for something to look up to.
For a time at least, Salinger may have considered himself an American prophet, a voice crying in the urban wilderness. Today he is remembered for the briefness of his witness, still reprimanded for his refusal to continue on, as if he owed more to the world than he had already given. Somehow, in a way nearly as mystical as his stories’ gentle epiphanies, the passage of time may reveal that J. D. Salinger fulfilled his duty as author and perhaps even his calling as prophet long ago. The remaining obligation lies with us. In this way, Salinger’s story continues on, passed from author to reader for completion. By examining the life of J. D. Salinger, with all its sadness and imperfections, together with the messages delivered through his writings, we are charged with the reevaluation of our own lives, an assessment of our own connections, and the weighing of our own integrity.
*Dorothy Olding remained Salinger’s agent until 1990, when a stroke forced her into retirement. She was then succeeded at Ober Associates by Phyllis Westberg, who acquired Salinger as a client. Salinger’s affection for Olding was unshakable throughout the fifty-seven years of their friendship. She died in 1997.
Acknowledgments
I would like to gratefully acknowledge the following institutions and individuals for their kind cooperation and for the invaluable support they have provided:
Princeton University, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library:
Archives of Story Magazine and Story Press
Archives of Harold Ober Associates
Ian Hamilton Working Papers
Ernest Hemingway Collection
The New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division:
Archives of The New Yorker
Charles Hanson Towne Papers, 1891–1948
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the University of Texas at Austin:
J. D. Salinger Collection
The Morgan Library & Museum:
J. D. Salinger–E. Michael Mitchell Collection
Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections:
Katharine Sergeant White Papers
The New York Times
San Diego Historical Society
My family
Michael Anello
Joseph Alfandre and family
Brin Friesen
W. P. Kinsella
Grzegorz Musial
Declan Kiely
Jere Call
Andy Hollis
Special thanks are extended to my editors at Random House, Susanna Porter and Benjamin Steinberg. Additional gratitude is owed to Mark Hodkinson, my long-suffering editor in the United Kingdom, who set this book in motion.
Notes
Chapter 1: Sonny
1. J. D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour—an Introduction (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), 144.
2. Ibid., 177.
3. Birth certificate of Solomon Salinger, Board of Health of the City of Cleveland, March 16, 1887. This document gives Fannie’s age as twenty-two and Simon’s as twenty-six. The birthplace of both parents is named as being “Polania, Russia,” as Lithuania was then part of the Russian Empire. The document also provides the Salingers’ address of 72 Hill Street, Cleveland, an address that no longer exists.
4. Paul Alexander, Salinger: