J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [4]
In the 1920s, religion and nationality became increasingly important the higher one climbed the social ladder. In New York especially, pedigree and Protestantism were the hallmarks of respectability. As the Salingers advanced upward and downtown, they shifted increasingly into an atmosphere of intolerance that would prove uncomfortable.
In reaction, they raised Sonny and Doris with a mixture of lukewarm religious and ethnic traditions. They never forced their children to go to church or synagogue, and the family celebrated both Christmas and Passover. Later in life, Salinger would craft most of his characters with similar backgrounds. Both the Glass and Tannenbaum families would easily acknowledge their half-Christian, half-Jewish heritage, and Holden Caulfield would comment that his father had been “a Catholic once, [but had] quit.”
Miriam adored her son. Perhaps because his birth was a difficult one or in response to feeling abandoned during her own youth, she indulged him. Sonny could do no wrong. This put Solomon in the precarious position of attempting to discipline him while trying not to invoke the wrath of his wife, which could be considerable. By most accounts, when a crisis arose in the family, it was usually Miriam’s judgment that prevailed, leaving Sonny largely unrestrained.
Salinger blossomed under his mother’s attention and he was close to her all her life, even dedicating The Catcher in the Rye “To My Mother.” She always believed that her son was destined for greatness, a belief he came to share. Consequently, they had a rare bond of understanding. Well into adulthood, Salinger and his mother exchanged gossipy letters, and he reveled in telling her acerbic stories of the people that he knew. Even during the war, Miriam enjoyed cutting articles out of movie-star magazines and sending them to her son, complete with her own comments scribbled in the margins. Salinger spent hours on the front line reading the clippings his mother had sent him, all the while dreaming of Hollywood and home. Reinforcing each other in these ways, Miriam and Jerome shared a sense of humor and closeness that unified them, often to the exclusion of others. Because his mother understood him so well and believed in his talent completely, he came to expect the same reaction from others and had little patience or consideration for those who might doubt him or not share his point of view.
Among the doubters was Salinger’s father. As he rose in status, Sol came to identify with the world of his neighbors, for the most part wealthy businessmen and stockbrokers, and allowed his heritage as the son of Jewish immigrants to recede discreetly into the background. In 1920, when he described himself as the manager of a “cheese factory” to census takers, he admitted that his parents had been born in Russia. By 1930, he presented his situation differently, informing record takers that he worked in produce as a commission merchant and his parents had been born in Ohio. Solomon clearly saw nothing wrong in blending in as a route to success. Though some might regard this as evidence of a talent for fiction that his son would soon inherit, Sol came to represent the very values that his son scorned, traits that Salinger’s future characters would condemn as phoniness, concession, and greed.
Worse still, Sol never seemed to understand his son’s aspirations and wondered why Sonny could not be more practical. When Salinger, at an early age, expressed a desire to become an actor, Sol balked at the idea in spite of his wife’s tacit approval. Then, when he later announced his intention to become a writer, Sol scoffed again. Not surprisingly, Salinger grew up considering his father shortsighted and insensitive, and their relationship was strained. Years later, Sonny’s best friend, Herb Kauffman, would recall