J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [97]
Salinger displays the result of their mutual growth as mother and son plan to take out the boat, which has lain stagnant for months. This is a symbol of rebirth, but in order to accomplish it they will need each other. “You’ll have to help [your father] carry the sails down,” Boo Boo tells her son. The story ends in a scene representing union, equality, and compromise, an affirmation of their need for each other and the power that their love contains. Together, Lionel and Boo Boo race home. And through the love of his mother, Lionel wins.
In writing this story Salinger relied heavily upon memories of his own childhood. His schooling and youth were generally populated by upper-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Like Lionel, Jerry Salinger was likely to have been aware of the inevitable murmurings about him being half Jewish. Gloria Vanderbilt, the epitome of upper-crust society, thoughtlessly referred to the young Salinger simply as “a Jewish boy from New York.”7 The discomfort of being stereotyped in this way was still fresh in Salinger’s mind when he wrote “Down at the Dinghy.”
The story is not Salinger’s personal complaint or gnashing of teeth; it is a reaffirmation of the faith in human connection he had found on the battlefields of France and had nearly lost in the agony of the death camps, a confirmation that began to reemerge in “Just Before the War with the Eskimos” and comes to fruition in “Down at the Dinghy.” Upon returning home to Connecticut and after three long years of doubting the presence of God in man, Salinger proudly declared to Elizabeth Murray that, spiritually, “the old ship is steady again.”8
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When Salinger returned from Wisconsin, he was met by an unpleasant but all too familiar situation. The New Yorker had previously rejected his story “Needle on a Scratchy Phonograph Record” and Salinger had reluctantly submitted it to Cosmopolitan, where A. E. Hotchner was now an editor. Hotchner claimed to have influenced the magazine to accept the story since Cosmopolitan was still wary of Salinger after the problems surrounding “The Inverted Forest.” But in doing so, it had taken the liberty of changing the story’s title without consultation, releasing it as “Blue Melody.” Not only was Salinger furious at Cosmopolitan, but he also blamed Hotchner, ending whatever still existed of their association. The incident signified the closing stage of Salinger’s involvement with the slicks, but not before he was forced to endure one last embarrassment at their hands.
When “Down at the Dinghy” was submitted to The New Yorker, the magazine rejected it. Determined to see it in print regardless, Salinger sold the story to Harper’s. On January 14, 1949, he complained to Gus Lobrano that Harper’s had asked him to shorten the piece. Salinger naturally hesitated but made the changes rather than abandon “Dinghy” altogether.9 It was the last time he would make such concessions for the slicks and the last time a Salinger story would ever premiere in an American magazine other than The New Yorker.
A productive year, 1948 had proved to be a period of cleansing for Salinger in which he began to reevaluate his past while cementing his New Yorker relationship. And despite his scathing critique of his suburban neighbors in “Uncle Wiggily,” that November, he happily renewed the lease on his studio apartment in Stamford.
As 1949 began, The New Yorker was holding Salinger’s next story to appear in the magazine, a tale entitled “The Laughing Man.” This piece shows the clear influence of Sherwood Anderson and is a fanciful adaptation of Anderson’s 1921 story “I Want to Know Why.”* It examines the fragile nature of childhood innocence and the power of the storyteller to construct and dismantle dreams. Salinger’s most imaginative and playful story to date, readers found it captivating.
“The Laughing Man