J. D. Salinger Becomes Jerry

I've been writing this in my head ever since I watched a documentary on J.D. Salinger on PBS.  Maybe I knew some of the information, but I pushed it out for room for quilting stuff in the past 15 years.  I am usually very good at separating the personal and the performer. Usually I don't care that an actor is an idiot personally if his acting is such that it moves me on screen to either laugh or cry.  I mean acting, writing, all the creative arts are meant to be viewed separately from their creators so if they're human and flawed, it's ok as long as the art they produce isn't.  Maybe that's not expressed very well but I never cared that Elvis was a bloated druggie who seduced his wife when she was a teenager and then cheated on her, but only that some of his music was amazing and that I liked it.  However, I have been known not to watch a movie made by a known pedophile.  Ok, back to "Jerry," as he was called throughout the documentary.

First, I didn't realize he was actually of my parents' generation and had endured all the horrors of World War II.  When I read Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, I felt that immediate connection to Holden and to the author and was sure he wasn't much older.  I remember discussing the novel with my parents and their rejection of his premise of "phoniness."  I am sure I didn't present the ideas well and certainly included criticism of them in my comments, but they were definitely rejected.  My folks were his age, Dad was in the Navy during World War II, but they didn't seem enthralled with Jerry's book as I was.  I think Salinger didn't write for his own generation but for a younger one.  It's almost impossible to believe that much of Catcher was written as he tromped through bloody battle fields.  It seems almost as though he wants to forget that horror and return to a younger age.  It was mentioned that he often hung out with much younger people, and that people his own age were too old for him.

Also, Jerry didn't want to be popular.  He wanted to be revered as a great writer whom only a few would be intellectual enough to understand.  Wow!  He was therefore disappointed in the Catcher's success.  That universality of his novel is what made it great but it's what he rejected about his own writing.  I think he rejected that he was just like a lot of us, and that his youth was similar in any way to anyone else's.  He seemed to want more to be unique than to be universally read.  I think he was successful in that with his Glass family short stories and novelettes.  I read those as well and they are not as universal in theme as Catcher in the Rye.

The documentary pointed out that three times the novel had inspired individuals to commit violence, with intent to eradicate some of the phoniness in the world.  I wonder how many times the Bible and other religious tomes have inspired violence.  I think crazy people do crazy things and find their inspiration in whatever is handy and you cannot blame the author.  But maybe it preyed on Salinger?  I think he had already been exposed to all the horrors of war and what human beings do to other human beings and would have known his book was not at fault.

The most bizarre thing about Salinger to me, and when he became Jerry in my mind and not the great writer J. D. Salinger, was the discussion of his fixation on girls, very young, innocent women, whom he liked only until he personally had thrown them off the cliff.  He wasn't catching them from becoming adults, only watching until finally they realized for themselves that he was a bit of a pervert and was using them.  Then, he would kick them out.  The documentary implied that it was wrong of the one woman to write of her affair with Jerry and later to sell the letters written to her by Jerry.  Nope, can't see it.  He wrote to all sorts of young women, and I think they should all sell the letters if they wish to.  He exposed himself to ridicule by writing the letters in the first place.  He knew that once something is written down, it can't be erased; he knew the power of the written word and its worth.  He used words to seduce these childlike women, and the society of the time all but thrust them at him.  I think this is where the parallel to Elvis came to mind.  Jerry had several Priscilla's.  My sympathies were most drawn to the wife with whom he had two children and whom he rejected when she was no longer his girl, but the mother of his children.  Even that is not unique to Jerry; many immature men are known to have that issue.  Most work through it and realize the advantages to being an adult but I don't think Jerry ever wanted to be an adult.

I think he didn't publish in his later years because he was either afraid it wasn't any good or afraid it would be popular, once again showing his lack of esoteric uniqueness.  The PBS documentary was very well done and consumed 10 years of the producer/director's life.  It certainly changed my view of Salinger to Jerry, but I will always think of Catcher in the Rye as a great novel.