J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [40]
Completed at Fairfield by October, under the lingering misery of Salinger’s Nashville-induced depression and in reaction to the uncertainty of impending combat, the story is notably void of negativity. Salinger’s own ability to confirm the beauty of life from beneath the apprehension and despondency he was suffering is testimony not only to his personal perseverance, but also to the evolution of his literary ideas. These ideas were not only being offered to readers; in this story, Salinger was plainly using writing as therapy and as a means to soothe his fears. Through “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” Salinger’s work developed from a genre that presented mainly observation to one that provided hope.
*Carol Marcus actually married Saroyan twice, in 1943 and again in 1951. In 1959, she married the actor Walter Matthau. Marcus was an inspiration for Holly Golightly, the lead character of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. She died in July 2003.
*Salinger not only excused the quality of “The Varioni Brothers” to Burnett—a professional confession—but also derided the story to his closest personal friends and secretly ridiculed those who spoke highly of the work.
*The controversy haunted Chaplin for years after returning to his native England. In 1956, the Crown considered Chaplin for knighthood. According to the British Foreign Office, the 1943 paternity suit (which Chaplin lost, although later blood tests proved he was not the father) and his relationship with Oona O’Neill were cited among the reasons the honor was deferred. He was finally knighted in 1975.
*Few believed the marriage would last. Salinger himself wrote a letter mocking the couple on their wedding night and sent out copies to friends. Eugene O’Neill was so appalled by the union that he never spoke to his daughter again. His fury was such that his will stipulated that she receive nothing of his inheritance. In 1954, after Chaplin fled America, Oona renounced her U.S. citizenship in favor of her husband’s. After Chaplin’s death in 1977, friends say, Oona became a lost soul. She died in 1991.
*Details such as this lend the story added veracity. Southern etiquette at the time required a girl to be introduced to her suitor’s father. Sol’s absence in this account, together with Miriam’s and (especially) Doris’s presence, are elements typical of the Salinger family that Laurene would not have understood.
*Salinger would remember the inquisitive Gardner. Within a year, his name was applied to the unfortunate lead character of “The Magic Foxhole.”
*Fort Holabird was also the army depot for jeeps ready to go overseas and contained thousands of jeeps at any given time. It was here that Salinger fell in love with the jeep, his vehicle of choice until very old age.
4. Displacement
On January 1, 1944, at Fort Holabird, Salinger celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday. Initially, he had expected to be stationed there for about six weeks, but three months had passed while he awaited deployment overseas. Preparations for the invasion of occupied Europe were under way, and Holabird was thick with rumors that it would be launched the following spring.1
While awaiting departure, Salinger studied for the Counter Intelligence Corps and continued to write. Uncertain as to his fate in Europe, he focused on his career, producing a large number of submissions and receiving a large quantity of rejections. Between October 1943 and the beginning of February 1944, Story magazine alone declined five such attempts, and as Story had become Salinger’s vehicle of last resort, the total number of rejections can easily be doubled.
Story’s dismissals were doubtless valid, but some responses were perhaps callous under the circumstances. Rebuffs were characteristically brief. Many bordered on sarcasm. On December 9, 1943, shortly after election day, Whit Burnett informed Harold Ober, for instance, that Salinger’s latest submission “did not quite get [his] vote.” When turning down “What Got into Curtis