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By Root 1471 0

As Marcus put it, “I told Oona I was afraid that if I wrote to Bill, he’d find out what an idiot I was, and decide not to marry me, so she marked the clever passages in her letters from Jerry and let me copy them, as my own, in my letters to Bill.”18 Once reunited with Saroyan, Marcus was distraught to learn that he was unsure about whether to marry her. His opinion of Carol had changed after reading all those “lousy glib letters” she had sent. Marcus frantically admitted to the deception and, after gaining his forgiveness, married Saroyan in February 1943.*

Working on a number of stories, Salinger was eager to retain his public profile. Seeking a swift commercial release to accomplish this, he remixed an old recipe assured of success and submitted it to Collier’s, the same bastion of high-profile kitsch that he had so bitterly complained about only months before. On December 12, 1942, Collier’s published “Personal Notes of an Infantryman.” It is plain that Salinger released “Infantryman” purely because it was expedient to do so. “Infantryman” is constructed using the same simple formula as “The Hang of It” and is essentially the same story. The fact that both pieces were picked up by Collier’s was not surprising. Salinger was gradually learning which magazines liked what kind of writing. Like “The Hang of It,” “Personal Notes of an Infantryman” employs a neatly predictable O. Henry ending and is imbued with patriotism and a warmth toward the military.

Despite the similarities between “The Hang of It” and “Personal Notes of an Infantryman,” the two narratives left different footprints on Salinger’s career. When “The Hang of It” was published by Collier’s in July 1941, Salinger was thrilled at what he viewed as a breakthrough. It was this story that he used to impress Oona O’Neill. In contrast, “Infantryman” was deployed by Salinger only as literary filler, to plug the gap between his period of literary inaction and the completion of more discerning works. It was certainly not a story that Salinger bragged about. Nor could he attract Oona’s attention as easily with this story as he had with “The Hang of It.” In any case, Oona was now in Los Angeles, where her mother, Agnes Boulton, was hoping to build her daughter into a movie star.

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Salinger began 1943 by producing a series of commercial stories designed to reproduce the easy sale of “Infantryman” to Collier’s and better pieces targeted at The New Yorker.19 He even began to think of selling his work to Hollywood, where he might impress and be closer to Oona after the war.

Salinger’s turn to commercialism in early 1943 is unsurprising. He found it easy to produce such works, which was attractive considering the amount of time now consumed by his army duties. The “slicks” also paid well, and his correspondence throughout 1943 demonstrates a certain eagerness to make money.

In the months straddling 1942 and 1943, Salinger also submitted two satirical stories to The New Yorker. The first, entitled “Men Without Hemingway,” lampooned the grandiose war novels he supposed would result from the conflict. Another, awkwardly named “Over the Sea Let’s Go, Twentieth Century Fox,” was a spoof on the propaganda films being spewed out by Hollywood.20 The New Yorker returned them both. By February, Salinger had also sent The New Yorker a short story called “The Broken Children,” which he considered his best work since entering the service.21 In the end, “The Broken Children” was rejected not only by The New Yorker but by Story as well. The rejections mean that none of these stories has survived.

Understandably, Salinger became increasingly bitter toward The New Yorker over the course of 1943. It had been almost two years since the magazine had accepted “Slight Rebellion off Madison,” and Salinger now began to doubt that he would ever see the story in print. The New Yorker, he claimed, was interested only in its own clique of (as he put it) “little Hemingways.”22 Feeling excluded and frustrated, he turned to other magazines.

In April, his agent sold “The Varioni Brothers” to