Lecture 20 jerome david salinger

born in 1919

Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 in New York. His father was a prosperous importer of ham and cheese. The boy grew up with a sister who was eight years older than he. It was said of him that he was friendly with other children, but he always wanted to do unconventional things; for hours no one in the family knew where he was or what he was doing; he only showed up for meals. He seldom joined other boys in a game.

Salinger did not do well at school, so his parents enrolled him in the Valley Forge Academy in Pennsylvania which was a military academy. There at night, tenting a blanket over his head to hide his flashlight beam from the Valley Forge duty officer, Salinger wrote his first short stories.

On graduating from the Valley Forge Academy he told his family that he wanted to become a writer. His father thought that was not the career for him; his son, he believed, should step into his father's shoes. So Salinger was sent to Poland to learn the ham business. For a couple of months he slaughtered pigs and waggoned them through the snow with the slaughter master. Then he returned to America.

Salinger tried to attend college but soon found that the academic program was of no avail to him. The first story he published was the "Young Men" (1940).

During World War II he spent four years in the army and was sent to Europe. He was assigned to discover Gestapo agents by interviewing French civilians, and to capture Germans. [101]

In 1943, while Salinger was still in France, the American magazine Saturday Evening Post published his story "The Varioni Brothers'". Sergeant Salinger sent the money he earned to the editor of the magazine Story to help other young writers.

In 1944 Salinger met Ernest Hemingway, then a war correspondent in France. Hemingway had read Salinger's stories and said that the young writer had "a helluva talent" (a hell of a talent). Some other stories of his, published in 1946 in the New Yorker, a very respectable literary magazine, brought him fame as a writer. One of these stories, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut", was filmed. But Hollywood turned it into a "soap opera", that is to say, made a commercial film characterized by little action and much sentiment. (Some of these films used a story as a background for advertising soap and cosmetics, hence the derogatory name for them - "soap opera".) Since then Salinger has refused to sell any of his stories.

Salinger has become a classic because of his real understanding of American youth. His works written in the fifties, the years of the cold war, depict young boys and girls who have been justly called by critics the "silent generation", because they can't find their way in the post­war chaos.

Salinger sees the falsity of American life in the same way as his heroes. He has always disliked American sensational films about writers and actors, and photographs with scenes from the private lives of famous people, because he considers these to be intended mainly for publicity. He also hates American advertisements because they are meant to fool the public into buying things whether they need them or not, and he so detests fashionable social recreations, that he lives the life of a recluse.

Check yourself

1. When and where was David Salinger born and what was his father?

2. Where did he write his first short stories?

3. What did he tell his family on graduating from the Valley Forge Academy?

4. Why was Salinger sent to Poland? [102]

5. When did he publish his first story?

6. Where was the writer during World War II?

7. How did he help to fight against fascism?

8. When and why did Salinger refuse to sell any of his stories to the movies?

9. Why has the writer become a classic?

10. What do his works written in the fifties depict?

[103]