J.D. Salinger's Quest for Innocence

Few writers inspire as much dedicated love and speculation as J.D. Salinger does amongst his millions of fans. His most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, continues to sell more than 250,000 copies a year (Gelfant 495). It was his realistic portrait of a sixteen-year-old misfit that gained him worldwide popularity, and the reason his legacy continues to thrive today, more than forty years since he has published any new work.

So what, exactly, makes Salinger's writing so compelling? Why, after more than a half-decade of solitude, does he continue to engage modern-day readers?
On the surface, Salinger's raw and shocking methods of writing might knock the reader off-balance. His general style of composition is unique:

Salinger will often literally set his scenes in small, sealed-off spaces- such as, for example, the limousine in which the central scene of "Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters" is set. In "Franny" there is a startling moment when Lane, waiting for Franny to come back from the ladies' room, looks across the restaurant and sees someone he knows. It is startling because until this moment we had no awareness of there being anyone else in the restaurant. Salinger had typically isolated Franny and Lane at their table, so that we saw nothing and heard nothing but their conversation and the remarks of the waiter who attended to them. (Malcolm)

Salinger also used his writing as a way of expressing his own thoughts and troubles, which would create an unconscious feeling of familiarity and intimacy with his readers:

In the Glass family series, Buddy Glass, the second born and the family writer, was taken to be Salinger's fictional alter ego. Yet, as Peggy Salinger writes, her father, although not concerned with her school grades, exhorted her to read the same books that are found in Buddy's brother Seymour's bedroom: Tolstoy, Ring Lardner, Kafka, Mu Mon Kwan and so on. And in still another character, Zooey, she recognized the same words and same apologies about commandeering a room that she heard from her father: "We don't talk, we hold forth. We don't converse, we expound. At least I do." Zooey is filled with remorse about his boorish behavior, as Salinger says her father was. (McGowan)

Yet, ignoring his literal writing techniques, thematically at the base of all of Salinger's stories seems to be the eternal quest for innocence - Salinger's longing to return to a state of childhood adolescence and naivety, a state of which anyone can relate to. Most prominent in all his books is his loathing of "phoniness," a word used to describe his feelings for adult reality. In fact, Salinger's reasoning for his gradual seclusion over the past half-decade is not so puzzling after taking into account his cynical viewpoint of the world around him.

Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother on January 1st, 1919 ("J.D. Salinger"). As a child he attended prep schools not unlike the one his character, Holden Caulfield, was expelled from in The Catcher in the Rye. After prep school, Salinger transferred to the Valley Forge Military Academy from 1934 - 36 (Kaupunginkirjasto). In 1937, Salinger spent five months in Europe. From 1937 to 1938 he studied at Ursinus College and New York University, where he fell in love with Oona O'Neill, and wrote her letters almost daily (Kaupunginkirjasto). While attending Ursinus College, one of Salinger's professors named him "the worst English student in the history of the college" ("J.D. Salinger"). Later in his career, Salinger would continue to be criticized for his grammar and choice of vernacular.

That Ring Lardner is one of [Salinger's characters'] favorite writers is a considerable, if wholly inadvertent, irony. Lardner was the master of the American vernacular who, as H.L. Mencken wrote, "set down common American with the utmost precision." Salinger, by contrast, can be seen straining at every turn to write the way an American teenager would speak, but he only produces an adult's unwitting parody of teen-speak. Unlike Lardner, Salinger has a tin ear. His characters forever say "ya" for "you," as in "ya know," which no American except perhaps a slapstick comedian ever has said. Americans say "yuh know" or "y'know," but never "ya know." (Yardley C01)

Yet, in retrospect, many agree the vulgarity of Salinger's writing is part of what makes it so compelling and provocative:

Considered in isolation, the language is crude and profane. It would be difficult to argue, however, that such language is unfamiliar to our young people or that it is rougher than the language they are accustomed to hear in the streets among their acquaintances. [...] Lewd scribblings on sidewalks or on the walls of rest-rooms catch our attention and unsettle our sensibilities; and they become most shocking when they are seen in the sanctity of the printed page. (Corbett 441-43)

In 1939 Salinger enrolled in a short story writing workshop at Columbia University, which was taught by renowned Story Magazine founder and editor Whit Burnett (Kaupunginkirjasto). During the second semester of the class, Burnett saw raw talent in Salinger, and in the March-April 1940 issue of his Story Magazine, published Salinger's first short story, entitled The Young Folks ("J.D. Salinger").

Salinger was drafted into the army during World War II and was involved in the invasion of Normandy on Utah Beach (Gelfant 495). "Salinger's comrades considered him very brave, a genuine hero" (Kaupunginkirjasto). But Salinger experienced a great deal of trauma during the war, and was hospitalized for stress. His later writings reflect this state of mind ("J.D. Salinger").

In "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor," Salinger narrates his story through the first-hand perspective of a scarred war veteran engaging in correspondence with a 13-year-old British girl, and the tone and characteristics of the narrator imply a certain autobiographical nature:

In April of 1944, I was among some sixty American enlisted men who took a rather specialized pre-Invasion training course, directed by British Intelligence, in Devon, England. And as I look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us, in that there wasn't one good mixer in the bunch. We were all essentially letter-writing types, and when we spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually to ask somebody if he had any ink he wasn't using. When we weren't writing letters or attending classes, each of us went pretty much his own way. Mine usually led me, on clear days, in scenic circles around the countryside. Rainy days, I generally sat in a dry place and read a book, often just an axe length away from a ping-pong table. (Salinger 28 - 36).

Another one of Salinger's short stories to deal with the concept of post-war trauma is "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," which first appeared in the January 31, 1948, issue of the New Yorker ("A Perfect Day for Bananafish Summary & Essays"). In this story, Seymour Glass visits the beach and meets a young girl named Sybil. Sybil refers to Seymour as "See more glass," indicating her affinity for him. For the duration of the story, Seymour entertains Sybil at the beach, until the story ends abruptly, with Seymour's shocking act of apparently random suicide:

He glanced at the girl lying on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the twin pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies caliber 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple" (Salinger 3 - 18).

The ending has been analyzed by many critics, including Ihab Hassan in his article on Salinger's writing motifs: "In 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish,' the taste of life's corruption is so strong in the mouth of Seymour Glass, and the burden of self-alienation, even from his wife, Muriel, is so heavy, that suicide seems to him the only cleansing act possible" (Hassan 259 - 89).

The period of time in which Salinger wrote the story certainly helped direct his approach to its climax as well:

The second thing significant about this time period is that J.D. Salinger started to be interested in Zen attitudes toward life and art. It began in the 1940's when he visited Rama Krishna-Vivekananda Center in New York. According to these Zen attitudes, a suicide is not a defeat, but a triumph. Seymour wanted to escape from this "Phony" world and spiritual vulgarity, so he shot himself in the head in his hotel room. J.D. Salinger employed imagery to describe the whole scene. He also used a symbol to embrace this Zen attitude. A bananafish is a symbol of those people, who live in this "phony" world. When they realize they have enough of life's corruption, there is no way out; they have to die. ("Historical Analysis of 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' by J.D. Salinger")

Of course, the story that best and most famously typifies Salinger's hatred of "phoniness" is The Catcher in the Rye. Published in 1951, Salinger's novel was instantly controversial, and many critics of the time passed it off as simply aggravating:

I couldn't see what all the excitement was about. I shared Caulfield's contempt for 'phonies' as well as his sense of being different and his loneliness, but he seemed to me just about as phony as those he criticized as well as an unregenerate whiner and egotist. It was easy enough to identify with his adolescent angst, but his puerile attitudinizing was something else altogether. (Yardley C01)

Owing to the success of The Catcher in the Rye, a collection of Salinger's short stories entitled Nine Stories was published in 1953. This included eight previously published in the New Yorker. The concluding piece of this collection is "Teddy," about a young boy (the titular Teddy) on an ocean liner with his family en-route home from a European vacation. Teddy strikes up a conversation with a young man on the ship, discussing Eastern religion and philosophy. The story is very strange and once again reflects Salinger's exploration of religious and spiritual themes:

I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, [...] it was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean. (Salinger 166 - 198)

Salinger's last known piece of work, "Hapsworth 16, 1924," was published in the New Yorker on June 19, 1965. It was, once again, a story about childhood - this time, a return to the character of Seymour Glass as a young boy, prior to his suicide in "Bananafish."

In recent years, Salinger has become a social recluse, retreating to a home in Cornish, New Hampshire in the early 1950s ("J.D. Salinger"). This act of confinement further substantiates the theory that Salinger is uncomfortable in the adult world, and longs to return to a state of childhood naivety. In the early 1970s, a 53-year-old Salinger began privately courting teenaged author Joyce Maynard. When their relationship was made public, the tabloids attacked him, pushing him even further into alienation, as well as helping to revive rumors that he had pedophilic tendencies (despite her 18 years of age), which were initially begun after the publication of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" (Gelfant 495).

In the year 2000, Salinger's daughter Margaret published a book entitled Dream Catcher: A Memoir, in which she claimed her father drank his own urine and "spoke in tongues" ("J.D. Salinger").

Salinger tried to escape public exposure and attention as much as possible ("A writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him", he wrote.) But he constantly struggled with the unwanted attention he got as a cult figure. On learning of British writer Ian Hamilton's intention to publish J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life, a biography including letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends, Salinger sued to stop the book's publication. The book was finally published with the letters' contents paraphrased; the court ruled that though a person may own a letter physically, the language within it belongs to the author. ("J.D. Salinger")

Looking back in hindsight, everything leading up to this point in Salinger's life can be found in his early stories -- the contempt for "phoniness," inability to adapt to the adult world, and fascination with children. In fact, if one theme can be found throughout J.D. Salinger's entire body of fiction, surely it is his nostalgic yearning for his own childhood bliss. Scarred by a dreadful war, relationships gone awry and self-destructive mentality, Salinger's seclusion for more than forty years can only be seen as poetic justice - a fitting bookend to his exploration of childhood so prominently displayed in his short stories and fiction.

Works Cited

Corbett, Edward P.J. "Raise High the Barriers, Censors." America 7 Jan 1961: CIV. 441-43. DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale. 5 Jan 2006 .

"Nine Stories." Dead Caulfields. 14 Jan. 2006 .

Gelfant, Blanche H., ed. Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story. 2000. 495.

Hassan, Ihab, "J.D. Salinger: Rare Quixotic Gesture." Radical Innocence: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel. 1961. 259 - 89. DISCovering Authors. Online Edition. Gale. 05 January 2006 .

"Historical Analysis of 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' by J.D. Salinger." Sciaga. 15 Jan. 2006 .

"J.D. Salinger." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 14 January 2006. .

Kaupunginkirjasto, Kuusankosken. "J.D. Salinger." Pegasos. 14 Jan. 2006 .

Malcolm, Janet. "Justice to J.D. Salinger." The New York Review of Books 21 Jun 2001. 15 Jan 2006 .

McGowan, Geraldine. "The Truth About J.D. Salinger." Salon. 15 Jan. 2006 .

"Salinger, J.D." Britannica Student Encyclopedia. 14 Jan. 2006 .

Salinger, J.D. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." Nine Stories. New York City: Bantam Books. 1964. 3 - 18.

Salinger, J.D. "Teddy." Nine Stories. New York City: Bantam Books. 1964. 166 - 198.

Salinger, J.D. "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor." The New Yorker 8 April 1950: 28-36.

Yardley, Jonathan. "J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly." Washington Post 19 Oct 2004: C01.