J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [54]
The 12th Regiment was ordered to flush out resistance from the city’s southeast quadrant to the Hôtel de Ville. Salinger was also designated to seek out Nazi collaborators from among the French. According to John Keenan, Salinger’s CIC partner and best friend throughout the war, they had captured such a collaborator when a nearby crowd caught wind of the arrest and descended on them. After wresting the prisoner away from Salinger and Keenan, who were unwilling to shoot into the throng, the crowd beat the man to death. Salinger could do nothing but watch. The event is a bizarre footnote to what was otherwise one of the finest days of Salinger’s life. The fact that a human being whom he held in charge was beaten to death before his eyes—without affecting the joy of the day—indicates how much Staff Sergeant Salinger had become accustomed to death by the summer of 1944 and his sense of detachment.
Salinger was in Paris for only a few days, but they were the happiest days he would experience during the war. His recollection of them is contained in a September 9 letter to Whit Burnett that remains the most euphoric he ever wrote.
To the military triumph, Salinger had added his own, more personal, victory: he had spent time with Ernest Hemingway in Paris. Hemingway was serving as a war correspondent for Collier’s and had reportedly managed to slip into Paris ahead of the liberating armies. Salinger knew this and decided to seek him out. There was no question in Jerry’s mind where to find Hemingway. He jumped into his jeep along with Keenan and made straight for the Hôtel Ritz. Hemingway greeted Salinger like an old friend. He claimed to be familiar with Salinger’s writings and to have recognized him from his picture in Esquire.
When Hemingway asked if Salinger had any new works on him, Jerry managed to locate a copy of The Saturday Evening Post containing “Last Day of the Last Furlough,” which had been published that July. Hemingway read the story and was impressed. The two writers talked shop over drinks, to the great relief of Salinger, who had been longing for literary conversation. He was also relieved to find that Hemingway was not at all pretentious or overly macho, as Salinger had feared. Instead, he found him to be gentle and well grounded: overall, a “really good guy.”17
At first glance, it might appear that Salinger was exploiting the opportunity to bask in the glow of Hemingway’s fame. The truth is probably more complex. Salinger, the great setter of stages, was undoubtedly aware of the scene that he had crafted. He had never professed admiration for Hemingway or his work. On the other hand, he did admire Sherwood Anderson and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who, on these very same streets of Paris years before, had taken Hemingway under their wings when he was still a struggling writer. Salinger, therefore, was not so much savoring the company of Ernest Hemingway as he was partaking in the spirits of Anderson and Fitzgerald. Moreover, it is likely that Salinger perceived his time with Hemingway as a generational passing of the torch and that he went to the Hôtel Ritz not to pay homage but to collect what he considered to be his rightful inheritance.
Salinger and Hemingway would continue their relationship for years to come, through at least one additional meeting and an exchange of letters. In his book J. D. Salinger, Warren French provides an unverified and fanciful account of the two men meeting. According to French, who was himself wary of the story, Hemingway was explaining to Salinger the superiority of the German Luger over the American .45. To demonstrate his point, he fired his Luger at a nearby chicken and shot off its head. Salinger was horrified. According to French, Salinger later related the incident in “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor,” when the character of Clay shoots a cat. Though it is doubtful that the chicken story is true, Salinger derived great personal strength through his relationship with Ernest Hemingway throughout the war and called