J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [8]
On occasion, Salinger was invited to his English instructor’s home for afternoon tea, meetings that doubtless inspired Holden’s visit to Professor Spencer in The Catcher in the Rye but certainly never involved being subjected to lectures on life or essays on the Egyptians.
There actually was a cadet named Ackley enrolled at Valley Forge at the same time as Salinger. Long after the publication of the novel, Ackley’s best friend rose vehemently to his defense, angrily asserting that his pal was nothing like the character in the book.
The unfortunate character of James Castle also appears to be based upon fact. Salinger’s classmates reported that a cadet fell to his death from an academy window just before Salinger’s enrollment. Apparently there was some question as to how he had fallen, and the tragedy instantly became a campus legend.
Colonel Baker, Valley Forge’s founder, and his equivalent, Mr. Thurmer, Pencey’s headmaster, were similar to each other in many ways. Both were avid fund-raisers and constructed a kind of Potemkin village for the cadet families on Sundays. Overstarched and bedecked in military finery, Colonel Baker would have been an easy target for Jerry’s scathing mockery. Yet, years later, Salinger turned to Baker on a number of occasions for help and advice, and it was Baker’s endorsement of Salinger’s character that often outshone the opinions of others.
Salinger did well at Valley Forge. Whatever his inward rebellion against the authority of the place, it did indeed provide the discipline necessary for him to apply himself. His grades improved markedly. He developed a small circle of close friends. He became involved in campus activities, including intramural sports and, uncharacteristically, the glee club. The clubs and organizations that Salinger joined at Valley Forge would serve him well in future years. The French Club, the Non-Commissioned Officers’ Club, Plebe Detail (an officer cadet group), the Aviation Club, and his two years’ service in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps would all contribute to his military service during the Second World War and, although the author would be loath to admit it, perhaps helped him survive those years.
Although Salinger fulfilled all the requirements expected of a cadet,* his true interests lay in drama and literature. Apart from the activities required of him, Salinger joined two campus organizations whose significance eclipsed all the others: the drama club, Mask and Spur, and the academy yearbook, Crossed Sabres.
After his performances in plays at McBurney had won him the grudging admiration of the otherwise hostile faculty, acting had fallen into Salinger’s comfort zone and he was keen to continue performing once exiled to Valley Forge. So, though he may have joined most other clubs out of obligation, he joined Mask and Spur out of conviction. None of the club’s eighteen other budding actors was more talented than Jerry, and he took part in every play they performed. Popular or not, everyone agreed that Salinger was a natural. One classmate recalled that even offstage, “he always talked in a pretentious manner as if he were reciting something out of Shakespeare.” Academy yearbooks contain prominent photos of the obviously delighted Salinger in full costume, gleefully miming for the camera.
Salinger often said that he became a writer at Valley Forge. Friends recalled him scribbling under the covers by flashlight long after taps.
Cadet Corporal Salinger in 1936, in his yearbook photo from Valley Forge Military Academy. Salinger used his own boarding school as the inspiration for Holden Caulfield’s Pencey Prep when writing The Catcher in the Rye. Unlike Holden, Salinger excelled at Valley Forge. (Valley Forge Military Academy)
He was the literary editor of the yearbook both years that he attended and is featured in them prominently. It is actually hard to turn a page in either