Subject: Re: Back from the dead, or the living
From: denis jonnes (djengltl@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2000 - 00:49:19 EST
To Bruce, Benjamin & all--
Not wanting to push things too far, but feel there's actually a lot of
anger--plus all the other stuff--in Salinger too. There are probably
many sources behind this, but what he saw (and perhaps had to do) in the
war (i.e., Second World War) are probably prime causes. Salinger was
himself pretty pissed off about Pearl Harbor (but, of course,
everybody--i.e. Americans--was), enlisting within a few days of
Japanese attack. I think Paul Alexander's brief bit on the Fourth
Infantry Division begins to suggest dimensions of what was
involved--20,OOO casualties (dead and wounded) in 11-month period. It's
actually a miracle Salinger survived.
Worth noting for the section men that one of the essays on *Catcher*
in (I think) the Salzman collection refers to *Catcher* as "a war novel
once removed".
Denis Jonnes
Benjamin Samuels wrote:
>
> > AND: My dad was born in 1921. ALL he TALKS and THINKS about is WWII. I
> > wonder if JDS is back there, I wonder if he ever tried to write that WWII
> > novel he speculated about (maybe he's working on the damn thing NOW), I
> > wonder if in a sense _Catcher_ and the Glass Saga served as some sort of
> > escape from all that he experienced in those four years in the forties.
> > Amongst those underpublished 22 stories there is a handful were he's
> really
> > grappling with the horror. (I don't think "Esme" is as raw an experience
> as
> > some of the others.) And of course soon WWII is left forever behind. Ah,
> > just thought of what Boo Boo said in her letter to Buddy in _RHTRBC_:
> > "Maybe it's going to be perfectly all right, but I hate 1942. I think
> I'll
> > hate 1942 till I die, just on general principles."
> >
> > --Bruce
>
> I'm a generation behind you, Bruce, my grandparents were in WWII and both my
> grandfathers were already dead when I was born. (though not from the war)
> So, I've had little contact with living memories of that time. I've been
> trying to understand what it might have been like at that time- it seems all
> too impossible to imagine for me and my young male compatriots to all be
> drafted and sent to fight the good fight today. Anyway, what I really
> wanted to share was something that happened to me last week while working
> for the Census. I visited a house of an Very Angry Old Man. After a minute
> or so he stopped being angry at me (due, I'm sure, more to his lonliness
> than to my charm) and started telling me about some his experiences in the
> war, which were what was making him mad I can only assume. He recalled
> being in the pacific, a friend or relative of his had been killed at Pearl
> Harbor. He was in the Navy and told me about komikaze (sp?) pilots bearing
> down on his ship and he shot a bunch down. Killed seven of those %*%^%
> [racial slur] &@*##s . I don't know if I'm really doing him any justice
> here but he distinctly made me feel like lying down in the grass and staring
> at the sky for a while. Imagine all the drama of hearing about the war,
> getting drafted or signing up, gsaying goodbye, going to training, going
> overseas all leading up to a couple hours or a couple days in many cases of
> intense action.
>
> Here's a great line I heard on the radio tonight: "I love reading. I'm
> never blocked and every page is really good writing!"
>
> Love,
> Madhava
>
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