J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [99]
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Despite these rejections, by 1949, Salinger’s New Yorker successes had earned him a level of recognition he had long desired, and his fame had spread far beyond the readership of the magazine itself. Especially drawn to his work were artistic circles nationwide: filmmakers, poets, and fellow authors. The talents of the emerging writers Kurt Vonnegut, Philip Roth, and Sylvia Plath crystallized in the freshness of Salinger’s vision as they were inspired by his message and style. John Updike’s avowal of having “learned a lot from Salinger’s short stories” was not uncommon. “Like most innovative artists,” Updike pointed out, Salinger “made new room for shapelessness, for life as it is lived.”13
The readers of Salinger’s shapeless reality multiplied in 1949 with a number of major reprints of his stories. Doubleday reprinted “Just Before the War with the Eskimos” in its collection Prize Stories of 1949. “A Girl I Knew” was reprinted in Best American Short Stories of 1949, edited by Martha Foley. In 1950, Foley went on to recognize “The Laughing Man” as “one of the most distinguished short stories published in American magazines in 1949.”14 Whit Burnett republished “The Long Debut of Lois Taggett” in Story: The Fiction of the Forties. And, sweetest of all to Salinger, The New Yorker recognized “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” as one of the decade’s finest contributions and reprinted it in The New Yorker’s 55 Short Stories 1940–1950.
These were heady days for Salinger, and he found it difficult to maintain his equilibrium. For someone who valued the notion of balance, the temptation to bask in the satisfaction of his accomplishments was a potential hazard that cut straight into a major vein of his personality.
J. D. Salinger was always concerned about how he was perceived. The opinions of others mattered a great deal to him. For this reason, his personal and professional correspondence was consistently guarded and geared to the ear of the intended reader. Above all else, he dreaded being considered smug, a frequent accusation throughout his youth and army years. As an adult, smugness became the most affronting of labels, and he went to great lengths to avoid being perceived as vain. Salinger possessed an inherent conceit that had been fostered by his adoring mother during childhood and fed by his persistent ambition later in life; and though pride and high self-esteem are feelings common to authors, for Salinger, to be considered arrogant struck an especially raw nerve.
When “Down at the Dinghy” appeared in Harper’s in April 1949, it was accompanied by an autobiographical “contribution.” Salinger’s disdain for such self-indulgence had only deepened since Mademoiselle had requested, and not received, a similar sketch two years before. The fact that Harper’s had forced his hand to shorten “Dinghy” certainly did not make Salinger any more compliant, but he was clever in his aversion. He constructed a curt response to appear in the magazine that revealed his impatience for such a frivolous request and contempt for those who enjoyed fulfilling it. “This time,” Salinger promised, “I’m going to make it short and go straight home.”
In the first place, if I owned a magazine I would never publish a column full of contributors’ biographical notes. I seldom care to know a writer’s birthplace, his children’s names, his working schedule, the date of his arrest for smuggling guns (the gallant rogue!) during the Irish Rebellion.15
The “gallant rogue” comment was an obvious swipe at Ernest Hemingway, whose conceit and bravado were well known.* In fact, Salinger occupied much of this piece criticizing the phoniness of writers who enjoyed publicizing themselves, as Hemingway did. The tactic gave him the opportunity to criticize his competition while,