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By Root 1407 0

the 1935 or 1936 Crossed Sabres without coming across Jerry Salinger. He is pictured with almost every club, with every play, and even with the yearbook staff itself. His 1936 photo is large, taking up half a page. One suspects that Jerry also had a hand in the layout of the yearbook, which could almost pass for a pictorial supplement to The Catcher in the Rye. There are photos of the chapel, cheering crowds at the football game, and even a young man upon a leaping horse. But Salinger’s greatest contribution to Crossed Sabres was his writing. His voice can be heard on nearly every page: ironical, observant, and good-naturedly witty. When casting predictions on his classmates in a section called “Class Prophecy,” Salinger foresaw one cadet “playing strip poker with Mahatmi Ghandi” (sic), while he himself was to write a great play.17

• • •

When Salinger graduated from Valley Forge in 1936 after two constructive years, he seemed to have found his way. Whatever his apprehension upon entering the school, he had explored his talents to a degree that would have been improbable in New York. Through all his precociousness and bite, it seems that Jerry recognized his affection for the place. Through Crossed Sabres, he left the school a gift upon his graduation that truly represented the spirit he had brought there, one of both genuine warmth and veiled sarcasm. Salinger wrote the class song of 1936, and it is still sung at Valley Forge to this day:

Hide not thy tears on this last day.

Your sorrow has no shame:

To march no more midst lines of gray,

No longer play the game.

Four years have passed in joyful ways.

Wouldst stay these old times dear?

Then cherish now these fleeting days

The few while you are here.

The last parade, our hearts sink low:

Before us we survey—

Cadets to be, where we are now

And soon will come their day.

Though distant now, yet not so far,

Their years are but a few.

Aye, soon they’ll know why misty are

Our eyes at last review.

The lights are dimmed, the bugle sounds

The notes we’ll ne’er forget.

And now a group of smiling lads:

We part with much regret.

Goodbyes are said, we march ahead

Success we go to find.

Our forms are gone from Valley Forge

Our hearts are left behind.

• • •

In the autumn of 1936, Salinger enrolled in New York University at Washington Square, where he attempted to pursue a bachelor of arts degree. Washington Square, located in Greenwich Village, put Salinger back at home on Park Avenue and in the same atmosphere that he had been sent to Valley Forge to avoid. Away from the discipline of the military academy, he quickly drifted back into boredom and distraction.

At first glance, Washington Square appears to be an ideal setting for Salinger. Avant-garde in tastes and trends, this main branch of NYU was renowned for its melding of academic and artistic spirits. By all accounts, Salinger should have excelled there—and perhaps that was his intention. But the bohemian atmosphere of the Village campus may well have served as a diversion, rather than as an opportunity for Salinger to apply his talents. Situated in a nucleus of theaters, movie houses, and cafés, the college’s surroundings may have proved a lure far more irresistible to Salinger than the classroom. Of the classes in which he enrolled, it is uncertain just how many he actually attended. When he received his midterm grades during his second semester, it became clear that he was not going to pass, and he abruptly left the college.

After Salinger dropped out of New York University, his father attempted to give him direction. A practical man, Sol hoped to involve Jerry in the cheese and meat import business that had treated him so well. Jerry, of course, was in no way inclined to follow in his father’s footsteps, so Sol half sweetened, half disguised the offer. After informing his son that his “formal education was formally over.”18 Sol “unelaborately”* presented him with the opportunity to travel to Europe under the guise of refining his French and German. Hoping that his son would develop an interest