Yes, I know I’ve been writing a lot lately about J.D. Salinger, a guy who basically hid from humanity for the past 40 years. But the man’s death plunged me into a full-scale review of his work, much of which I had read when I was far less mature than I am now. Reading it now, in my upper 30s, I’m able to appreciate so much more of its brilliance, of its richness, of its depth. And more of my analysis seems ready-made for blog-post essays.
To wit:
As I’ve written about previously, J.D. Salinger’s short story “Teddy” has a somewhat ambiguous ending, which leaves some people confused as to what actually happens. There are, essentially, three schools of thought. Teddy’s sister Booper pushes him into an empty pool and he dies, Teddy pushes Booper into a full pool and they both live, or Teddy commits suicide while Booper watches.
I found some interesting evidence for the theory (which I adhere to) that Teddy is, in fact, dead because Booper pushes him into the empty pool.
This webpage is about the MS Kungsholm, a cruiseliner where JD Salinger spent time as “cruise director” according to the site:
Salinger mentions a cruiseliner named the “Kungsholm,” in fact, in his story, “A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist At All”:
“The only sound in the night came from the Havana harbor water slucking gently against the sides of the ship. Through the moon mist the Kungsholm could be seen, anchored sleepy and rich, just a few hundred feet aft. Farther shoreward a few small boats corked about.”
So, since we know many of Salinger’s settings come directly from his experiences (well-to-do Manhattan dwelling, the Army/WWII, prep school), it’s a pretty safe bet that the cruiseliner in “Teddy” would be at least something like the real-life Kungsholm. If we accept that as the case, then we should examine the Kungsholm’s swimming pool, since the pool in “Teddy” plays such a vital role. Herewith:
As you can see from the picture, all 4 walls of the pool are tiled all the way to the bottom (not just the top part, as some suggest would be a pool of this type’s design), as is the bottom itself. If it were empty, and Booper were on the ladder, or standing on the floor, the “highly accoustical” sound Salinger describes would make complete sense.
One argument in favor of a full pool and 2 living children at the story’s close is that they have a swimming lesson scheduled for that time, so the ship’s staff would not possibly schedule a water-changing then. But to my mind, I don’t think the fact that they have a lesson means it CAN’T be the day the water is changed. I don’t find it hard to believe that the person who schedules the lessons doesn’t coordinate with the person who schedules the water-changings.
Perhaps most importantly, though, is this. The pool at the end and the ocean at the beginning are structured parallels, both obviously having to do with water, which is ironically (or not ironically, if you believe in the cycle of rebirth) usually symbolic of birth/life/renewal. When Teddy is describing the orange peels floating on the water, then sinking below the surface in the beginning of the story, that is a metaphor, clearly, for death. The pool, then, continues this metaphor with Teddy’s actual death. The only place Teddy now lives is in the minds of all the people who knew him. Teddy has to be dead for the story to make any kind of sense, which I argue it does. Salinger is using Teddy as a saint, as a prophet, as a seer, as someone who has come to show us–even YOU, intrepid reader–the true way. And like all prophets, he must suffer an unjust and heartrending death in order to make his message all the more impactful.
If he is alive at the end of the story, the entire story falls apart.
The lesson, and the master craftsmanship, comes in the form of the slight shift in tone Salinger employs at the end of the story. Whereas in the previous sections, Salinger is using every tool at his disposal to engage the reader, to get you to LOVE (with intense emotion) Teddy, at the end, he pulls back, and shifts the tone into a much less sentimental, more more objective viewpoint. It’s a subtle trick to drive the lesson home: If you are heartbroken by Teddy’s death, you’ve missed the point of all the existential lessons he just taught you in his debate with Nicholson ["Son of Money."] That is, you’re still going through life having useless names and emotions for things, especially death, which means you’re doomed to a never-ending cycle of rebirth and death. You will never reach Brahma, oneness with God, “where it’s really nice.”
Feb 20
“Why?” this girl with shiny blonde/brown hair asked me in the TriBeCa Tavern recently. I was nursing a Guiness, waiting for my date to show up. “Why the hell would ANYone join the military voluntarily?”
This being TriBeCa, home of the trust-funders and the barnacles who leech off them, the question was certainly not inappropriate. There were a lot of answers to the question, of course, and some of them were actually true.
But, to enlarge the point, why DO we make the choices we make? To quote from the noir graphic novel video game, Max Payne:
“The past is a puzzle. Like a broken mirror, as you piece it together, you cut yourself. Your image keeps shifting and you change with it. It could destroy you, drive you mad. It could set you free. You’ll see the choices you didn’t know you’d made, like staying at work late to chat with a friend, instead of hurrying home to your family…. There are no choices, nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask, “Why me?” and “What if…?” when you look back, see the branches, like a pruned Bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn’t be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions…”
As to TriBeCa Girl’s question, the answer I chose was: “Well, weaving the blanket of freedom you sleep under every night is an important job, and I wouldn’t want to leave it to somebody else.” Another answer-choice, unstated but nonetheless true: “They paid off all my college loans. Let the Government pay the Government back I say, keep me out of it.” Or, “I got to blow shit up AND jump outta airplanes!”
But like with all things true, there’s also something deeper going on, a more profound truth than the ready-made bar-stool homilies we keep on hand for times like these. They’re less convenient, but, perhaps inversely-proportionally, even more true.
For me, that deep, secret truth was this:
J.D. Salinger was the reason why I joined the Army.
When I went to Basic Training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma to sweat my ass off and learn how to be a soldier, I brought exactly, but exactly, two books along with me for the ride. One was MacBeth, by this guy called Shakespeare, Bobby Damn Shakespeare, or something ridiculous like that, and the other was Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger. They were both tucked away ingloriously in this black sports duffle bag I had, stuffed in there along with two pairs of jeans, some T-shirts, athletic socks, underwear, a NO FEAR baseball cap, and a purple hooded sweatshirt. That was the extent of the civvie clothing I carried with me through Basic.
The thing of it is, I had gotten wayyy into Salinger just before I signed up, just before I listened to that damned crazy recruiter (“You get to wear jump boots!” …. “You get to wear a red beret!”) … I had read, if not everything, then damn near everything the guy had written, including the stories that had only appeared in magazines, that had never appeared in book form. Stories like “Soft-Boiled Sergeant,” and “This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise.” I will always remember the image of the main character in “For Esme–with Love and Squalor,” for example, taking his gas mask out of its case and filling the case up with books. Then, he went to war like that, just so he could tote all these books around with him in his gas-mask case strapped to his leg. That kind of thing is indelible.
Images like that and many others from Salinger’s stories actually influenced my decision to join the Army. It’s not mentioned much critically, but it’s pretty clear that Salinger’s own war experiences informed much of his work. And, I mean, if it was good for J.D. Salinger, maybe it would be good for me, too. Y’know, when you’re young and kind of lacking direction, it’s weird the things you hang onto, the ideas that can have a big impact on your life.
One thing’s for sure. I don’t know if it’ll be my next novel or the one following, but I know I have at least one “Army novel” in me. So for that alone, the choice (pre-destined or not) turned out, looking back at the forked lightning, to be a great one.
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Salinger’s “This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise” will appear on the website this coming Tuesday, 2/23/10.
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Apropos of nothing, here’s my Max Payne demo:
