For J.D.Salinger - With Love And Squalor.

Author J.D. Salinger is dead at the age of 91. I was never a huge fan of his novel, The Catcher In The Rye. No plot and no real characters besides the main one, an American teenager named Holden Caulfield, who’s just been kicked out of prep school. Not much in the way of content, either. It follows a lonely, sensitive and - let’s face it - pretty intelligent guy as he lurches from one intense emotional state to another. Although, when you think about it, that’s exactly what someone his age is like. So, in a way, the book is what it’s about. A neat trick, but what I really like, what really impresses me is the voice. Holden’s voice. The Catcher In The Rye is told from his point of view and Salinger captures exactly how someone like that speaks. I mean perfectly. Of course, even the strongest voices fade over time if you’re not reminded of them. But you have to be older than Holden Caulfield to know about that.

My favorite story by J.D Salinger is For Esme – With Love And Squalor. I like it because it’s about a damsel in distress. Except she’s not a damsel and she’s not really in distress. It takes place in London after World War II. An American serviceman, a writer in real life, meets an English girl and they get along. Briefly, but well. It’s hard to say exactly how old she is. In the story, she’s thirteen, but precocious and - without getting all Roman Polanski on him - it’s a distinction the author is wont to obscure. One difference that he captures perfectly is between what you want and what you need. In the story, the soldier wants to help Esme, the girl, but really needs help himself. He thinks she’s lonely, but he’s the one who’s lonely. Not a completely alien set of circumstances. At least, for yours truly. Anyway, Esme wants the soldier to write a story especially for her. It should be squalid and moving, too, because she is extremely interested in squalor. Being an English aristocrat, she has no knowledge of it herself. So, there’s a story within the story and, if not squalid, it’s very moving. Pathetic, if you want to know the truth. It’s about an American soldier in post-war Germany, who has a raging case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In those days, however, it’s called “Battle Fatigue” or a “Nervous Breakdown” by indifferent bureaucrats and crude civilians, respectively. So, he’s living in Germany, all untreated, and his condition isolates him from everyone. He doesn’t even answer the letter from an English girl/woman named Esme (get it?) who also sends him a sentimental gift. Then it ends. Yeah, it’s pretty awful – in a sad way. I know it’s just a story and the real soldier makes it moving as a favor to the real Esme, but it’s pretty goddam authentic.

Now, for the squalid and moving part of this story: J.D. Salinger’s life. He spent most of it as a cranky hermit in northern New Hampshire. He wrote little or nothing after 1953 and lived alone after 1966. He banged the occasional hot chick, but that’s pretty thin gruel if it’s like your life. Unless he went completely to the other side and became a Zen Buddhist, then empty is your goal. Otherwise, I’d say J.D. was an unhappy guy. A picture of Salinger smiling would be up there with the photo of a beaming Albert Camus, which hangs – or did – above the stairs in the French Library of Boston. Exactly contemporary with the Existentialists, he was not one himself. J.D. Salinger did not contemplate existence. He merely described the part of it that got in his way, which was, basically, all of it.