J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [84]
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Salinger may have thrown himself into dating, nightclubs, and playing cards in a futile effort to forget Sylvia and the war, but the previous five years had changed him fundamentally. Whatever spiritual revelation he had experienced on the battlefield proved to be indelible and had already begun to mold his writing. As a result, two lasting elements of Salinger’s work come into focus during the latter months of 1946, each with deep wartime roots: an inclination toward mysticism and the related conviction that his professional work was itself a spiritual exercise.
By late 1946 Salinger had begun to study both Zen Buddhism and mystical Catholicism.* Rather than being shaped by them, he embraced these religious philosophies because they reinforced positions he already held. Zen was especially attractive due to its emphasis on connection and balance, subjects that his writings often covered anyway. The study of these faiths created in Salinger a feeling of duty to offer spiritual enlightenment through his work.
As if making up for lost time, during the summer of 1946 Salinger began to write a number of stories simultaneously. Between the months of August and December, he completed “The Male Goodbye,” “A Young Girl in 1941,” and his most ambitious project yet, a 30,000-word novella entitled “The Inverted Forest.”
“The Inverted Forest” should be viewed as a work that shows the author in transition. Back home in New York, he found himself attempting to live in two separate realities: the “inverted” world of spiritual creativity and the social world of Greenwich Village clubs and poker games. Mirroring this struggle, “The Inverted Forest” contains themes that will dominate Salinger’s future writings. Through this story, the author asserts his conviction that art and spirituality are synonymous and his belief that inspiration is connected to spiritual revelation. It depicts life as a struggle between material and spiritual forces and raises questions regarding the ability of art to survive the hostility of modern society. However, considering Salinger’s inner turmoil after the war and the difficulty he was having writing even the simplest of pieces during 1946, such ambitious themes were perhaps too complicated for a single story at the time and resulted in a novella that is disconnected and imprecise.
“The Inverted Forest” tells the story of Corrine von Nordhoffen, the rich daughter of a suicidal orthopedic-appliances heiress and a German baron, and of her outcast schoolmate Raymond Ford, who is abused by his alcoholic mother. The story is told in two parts. The characters are introduced as children, but the bulk of the story is told nineteen years later, when they reestablish their relationship. Corrine has since become a successful businesswoman, and Ford is now a professor at Columbia University and the author of two volumes of truly inspired poetry.* Ford found his poetry and his path in life by cloistering himself in the dusty library of an elderly patroness, where his seclusion created a poetry-filled world like an “inverted forest” deep within his soul.† Ford’s connection to poetry has separated him from normal romantic inclinations, but Corrine determines to marry Ford regardless and after an extended courtship of sorts (consisting mainly of dates at a Chinese restaurant), the two are wed.
After a brief, lopsided marriage of twin beds, Corrine becomes the unwitting accomplice to Ford’s artistic