J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [36]
What elevates “Elaine” above Salinger’s previous stories is the suggestion that Elaine cannot now return to a world of innocent illusion; once she has been defiled, her purity begins to fade. We also suspect that her mother’s sudden rush of emotion is not strong enough for Elaine’s needs and will soon be submerged by her own Hollywood fantasies, leaving Elaine once again stranded in a world that will complete the decay that Teddy has set in motion.
However, Elaine too might find solace in the fantasy world of movies; and the narrator appears to support allowing Elaine her own reality in view of her limitations, just as we grant children their individual reality in light of their innocence.
An Air Corps photo taken in 1943 while Salinger, between boot camp and combat, was assigned to the Public Relations Department of the Air Service Command. A year later he would be fighting in Europe.
• • •
The same literary pursuits that Sergeant Salinger attempted to conceal from his ditch-digging troops rose to save him from the mundane duties he had begun to loathe. After stumbling upon “The Varioni Brothers” in The Saturday Evening Post and “The Hang of It” in The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors and Marines, his superiors at Fairfield assigned him to write for the Public Relations Department of the Air Service Command, to serve in what Salinger described to Burnett in July 1943 as “a huge, stupid office with lots of typewriters.” Though it was not the commission that he longed for, he was at least agreeable to the position. If writing publicity pieces for the Air Corps did not appeal to him, working behind a typewriter certainly did.
When not writing press releases at ASC headquarters in Dayton, Salinger found himself traveling to places such as Washington, D.C., and New York. In September, he was scheduled to fly with a photographer from Life magazine to a nearly barren region of Canada, where he was to write an ASC publicity piece for Collier’s.41 But Salinger’s career in public relations came to an abrupt end and the Canada trip was canceled.42
As early as July, the government had begun an investigation to determine Salinger’s political reliability. Agents visited McBurney and Valley Forge to gather information. Salinger himself had invited the investigation by applying for a position with the Counter Intelligence Corps. The War Department sent out an inquiry to Whit Burnett and others:
Subject: Jerome David Salinger
Will you be kind enough to inform this office of your opinion of this person’s discretion, character, integrity and loyalty to this country and its institutions? Have you any information that he is a member of any organization which advocated the overthrow of our constitutional form of government, is there any reason to question his loyalty to the United States?
James H. Gardner,
Captain, Air Corps43
When Salinger was informed of the contents of Captain Gardner’s letter, he must have been amused.* Discretion and loyalty were the very qualities that the army had begun to erase from him. In the eighteen months since his conscription, it had been unable to recognize his talents. Instead, he had been bounced from one position and place to the next. Frustration over his slow advancement had caused him to forsake his military aspirations and direct his ambition back to writing. Now, after delivering what Salinger viewed as disappointments and insults, the army was finally beginning to pay attention.
It was not Salinger’s talents as an author that it was focusing