It is amazing how much of this book is devoted to the three years JD Salinger had served in the US Army.
Unfortunately, it does a poor job of describing the six subcamps of the Dachau Holocaust camp liberated by Salinger's "unit," the 4th Infantry Division: Horgau-Pfersee, Aalen, Ellwagen, Haunstetten, Turkenfald, and Wolfrathausen.
This book tends to read like a typical biography of any famous author. The David Shields and Shane Salerno biography (below) is much, much better, though it is written in a very different style.
Salinger had spent seven years in Vienna during his teen-age years. During the war, shortly after VE Day, he returned to Vienna to see the family he stayed with. Salinger arrived in Vienna only to find that every family member had perished in the concentration camps, including the girl with whom had had his first romance.
This was after Hürtgen Forest. This was after liberating the concentration camps. This was after his release from a psychiatric hospital (he self-identified; self-admitted.) This all happened in the space of three years.
This author provides much less information about Sylvia (marriage lasted less than a year) than the biography by Shields and Salerno.
By late 1946, Salinger had begun to study both Zen Buddhism and mystical Catholicism.
Salinger had carried the first six chapters of Catcher in the Rye into Europe when he landed on the "beaches" on D-Day.
In 1961, Time said Salinger had completed Catcher in the Rye, but does not state when. Slawenski says Salinger completed the novel in 1950. It was published in 1951, but The New Yorker refused to run excerpts of it.
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From "personal notes -- diary" regarding this book:
Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno, c. 2014
Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno, c. 2014
Jerome David Salinger
Born 1919
D-Day: 1944 (age 25)
Oona O’Neill: dated Salinger until his entry into US Army (daughter of most famous American playwright, O’Neill)
Jean Miller, met Salinger in 1949, just after the war; relationship, 1949 - 1955
Claire Douglas: second wife, 1953 - 1967
Leila Hadley Luce: a one-time girlfriend of Salinger; died in 2009
Joyce Maynard, lived with Salinger in the early 1970s, a novelist; Salinger, in his 50’s
Salinger’s older sister: Doris, b. 1912
Salinger himself, born 7 years later
Claire Douglas: his second wife, Claire, son Matthew, daughter Margaret (Peggy); a clinical psychologist; Jung Institute of Los Angeles since 1992; second wife from 1953 - 1967
[Note: Claire, his second wife; first wife, hardly counts; German woman, right after the war; very strange, something going on; mutual agreement to divorce, I think. Claire, his second wife officially, but probably, really, his "first" wife in all other respects.]
August 31, 2015:
I continue to read the Salinger book; every night a few pages before falling asleep in bed.
I am now well past halfway into it. He is about 55 years old; has seduced a 20-year-old into living with him, Joyce Maynard, who must have interned at The New Yorker; wrote a piece that resulted in her photo on front cover of Newsweek; she went on to become a novelist.
This is what I takeaway:
New York, Jewish, with all that baggage
As teenager, father sends him to Europe to learn the family business; importing/selling hams (remember, the family is Jewish); this is before WWII; while there “falls in love” with young woman — 14 y/o — in Vienna; longs to see her again
Falls in love with Oona O’Neill
ends up in US Army in WWII; in counterintelligence; already has first six chapters of Catcher in the Rye written; carries it with him into combat; continues to work on it; on one of the first waves hitting the beaches on D-Day
meets Hemingway at least once, maybe three times while in Europe; in Army
liberates at least one concentrations camp; sees the horror of these concentration camps (remember he’s Jewish)
learns that the first “crush” he had — the 14 y/o in Vienna — she and her family died in concentration camp
learns that his first adult love, Oona O’Neill has married a man who could be her father, Charlie Chaplin
returns home; after much struggle finally gets a piece published in The New Yorker, his lifelong dream
gets Catcher in the Rye published
the rest is history: becomes a recluse; probably a pedophile by today’s standards; certainly very immature with his desire for young women; once seduced and won, he tosses them aside
most likely suffered from PTSD after WWII but probably had mental health issues prior to US Army
He was probably mentally damaged / depressed when he was teenager in Europe learning his family’s business; not uncommon for late teen-agers to have “issues”
his experiences in WWII would “justify” PTSD
finding out his first “crush” had died in concentration camp would have been enough to justify everything that happened later
then loses Oona, his true first love
succession of “adolescent” females
reclusive; definitely “crazy” but not insane, as they say; his condition “justifiable”; amazing he never committed suicide; raises questions of whether PTSD prone to suicide; whether someone "crazy" less likely / more likely to be suicidal; narcissistic personality disorder?
I will finish book, but the story is now known.
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