J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [93]
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In February 1948, while still euphoric over his New Yorker success, Salinger received a familiar blow from the slicks. Good Housekeeping published his story about returning to Vienna in search of the shattered past, the story Salinger had submitted as “Wien, Wien” but now appeared as “A Girl I Knew.” Recalling similar experiences in 1944 with The Saturday Evening Post, Salinger was incensed. Once again, a magazine had changed a title without consulting him. The editor, Herbert Mayes, though, did not understand why Salinger was offended: “I don’t know what upset Salinger,” Mayes wrote, “but he protested vehemently and ordered his agent, Dorothy Olding, never again to show me any of his manuscripts.”15 Alterations without author consultation were common practice among such magazines, but in The New Yorker Salinger had found a solution to his problems. His enforced tolerance for the slicks was at an end.
While these professional frustrations and triumphs took place, Salinger remained in his Stamford, Connecticut, barn-studio with his dog, Benny, and began to work on two stories that would swiftly find their way to the pages of The New Yorker and advance his reputation. The first of these stories, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” is a portrait of unfulfilled lives, a glimpse into the disillusionment of Salinger’s new suburban neighbors.
When Salinger moved to the suburbs, he encountered the newly emerging suburban middle class, a segment of society whose growth was explosive in 1948 and among whom he found endless fodder for his writing. When Salinger lived in Connecticut, unabashed Americanism and materialism were unquestioned values. His neighbors pursued these values religiously and weighed one another against a standard of conformity that often suffocated individuality. Salinger found such material irresistible. Having long exposed the phoniness of society, he now found himself living in a culture that not only esteemed this quality he so despised but also sought to infect all of its members with it.
“Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” contains three major players: an upscale suburban housewife named Eloise, her former college roommate Mary Jane, and Eloise’s daughter, Ramona. As the story opens, Mary Jane is visiting Eloise at her home in suburban Connecticut. As the day wears on, the two women become progressively drunk and begin reminiscing over the past. “Uncle Wiggily” is an orgy of cigarettes and cocktails representing affectation and escapism, two of Salinger’s most frequent concerns.
In their stupor, Eloise recalls her lost true love, a soldier named Walt Glass, who was killed in a bizarre accident involving a small Japanese stove. The scene is broken by the entrance of Eloise’s eleven-year-old daughter, Ramona, an awkward child in thick glasses. Eloise is almost disdainful of her daughter and especially derisive of Ramona’s imaginary boyfriend, an invisible companion called Jimmy Jimmereeno. When Ramona announces that Jimmy Jimmereeno has been run over by a car and is now dead, readers realize that she has overheard her mother’s confession about Walt Glass.
The climax of the story is driven by nuance. When Eloise, still drunk, stumbles into Ramona’s bedroom at night to check on her, she finds her daughter compressed into a small portion of her bed as if to make room for an imaginary companion, as she had habitually done for Jimmy Jimmereeno. When confronted by her mother, Ramona admits she is making room for a new friend, the invisible Micky Mickeranno. Unable to replace her own true love, Walt Glass, Eloise becomes furious and physically forces her sobbing daughter to occupy all of the bed. There is then a moment of true tenderness between mother and daughter, followed by a pitiful recognition. Eloise picks up her daughter’s glasses from the nightstand and holds the lenses to her cheek to catch her tears.
The final paragraph reveals that Eloise is now aware of her own phoniness.