Salinger Jerome David - Letters to J.D. Salinger

Letters to
J. D. Salinger

EDITED BY

C HRIS K UBICA AND W ILL H OCHMAN

T HE U NIVERSITY OF W ISCONSIN P RESS

The University of Wisconsin Press
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Copyright 2002

The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Letters to J.D. Salinger / edited by Chris Kubica and Will Hochman.

pp. cm.

ISBN 0-299-17800-5 (cloth: alk. paper)

1. Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919-Correspondence.

2. Authors and readersUnited States. 3. Authorship.

I. Kubica, Chris. II. Hochman, Will.

PS3537.A426 Z48 2002

813.54dc21 2001006770

ISBN 978-0-299-17804-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-299-17803-1 (e-book)

Designed by Jane Tenenbaum

For Izzie and Charlie

Dear Reader,

My love affair with the U.S. mail began in fourth grade shortly after I read my first comic book during recess. It wasnt a very exciting story. Completely forgetable, actually, but on the comics inside back cover was a colorful series of advertisements through which a grade school lad with a few bucks could buy many wondrous, valuable, and sparkly things: pills that could make you strong-man-muscular in under three weeks, a space-age coin-counting device, an ant farm made out of a mysterious high-impact polymer, and rare, uncanceled stamps from Africa and the Middle East. I began sending away for anything and everything, using up a fair amount of my spare time. I decided at age eleven (because of the large volume of mail I was now generating) that I needed my own return address labels, which I ordered from an ad found in the coupon section of the Sunday Post-Crescent, Appleton, Wisconsins local newspaper. I also bought a box of glue sticks to expedite the sealing of envelopes.

Rarely did the items I ordered ever turn out to be just what Id hoped theyd be. The coin-counting device, for example, was nothing more than a flat, black plastic tray with half-circle grooves molded into it, each groove with tiny, barely visible raised numbers running along its sides. And those X-ray glasses only allowed me a brief glimpse behind the many silly ads Id been answering. But the thrill of creatively and rapidly composing correspondence (Why yes, thanks for asking, Id love to be one of the first to try a pack of your riotous, red pepper gum!), waiting six to eight weeks and then, at last, opening the mailbox to find small, liberally taped packages from far-off places like Ohio was always worth it. Some days, and with increasing regularity, Id get more mail than my mother. And on those dismal days when we got no mail at all, Id plead with Mom to drive me down to the Post Office to see if thered been some mistake, to see if there was some little lawn care equipment magazine or homeowners insurance flier waiting for me.

In a junior high English class, I was taught how to write proper letters of praise and complaint. I used this skill to send away for free but this time more useful stuff. It seemed that whether I complained about a product or congratulated the hell out of it, companies, at least at that time, had more coupons than they knew what to do with lying around the office and were more than willing to send them to anyone who had a stamp and anything at all to say about their stuff. I got three free cases of Pepsi this way three months in a row not to mention a bunch of free BASF-brand cassette tapes and enough mini-toothpastes to fill an entire bathroom drawer.

As I began to grow weary of the limited number of pencils and paper stocks available at the one small drug store that was a bike ride from my house, I tried to come up with ways to make enough money to buy a ticket to somewhere anywhere that offered a bigger selection. During a visit to my great-grandmother, Chicago became a contender when I checked out the Stationers heading in her Yellow Pages. Truthfully, though, any city large enough to be printed on my old globe would have suited me just fine. I thought maybe I could invent something to make some quick traveling cash; one idea I dreamed up was for a new kind of cigarette lighter made of glue, a spring, a tongue depressor, and a box of matches. I also drew up plans for a new board game tentatively called The Dark Ages which was kind of like chess but with a ten by ten board and two extra pieces called the Wizards who could move in all the same directions as the Queen but only three squares at a time. I tried to sell these ideas to a company I think was called Inventors International, Inc., another back-of-the-comic book ad-placer. For $1,200 a pop they would have helped me come up with winning marketing plans and I would have made more than enough dough to finally get out of town, but my weekly allowance at the time was only $2.00.

When high school began, after it sunk in that a fancy pen and paper quest in the big city wasnt going to be a financial reality for me, I tried to get to know some of the people I sat next to every day in my acting and drawing classes. I struck up a correspondence with one classmate from art class who was an excellent cartoonist. Between classes wed exchange hastily scribbled notes and drawings with each other by folding then jamming them through the narrow vent-slats of our locker doors. Bryan, another friend who was on an exchange program to Costa Rica for the year, sent to me and received from me at least one letter a day, sometimes more than one. I cant remember how much money I spent on stamps but I think perhaps too much. Every day Id come home from school and take that days Bryan letter filled with details of Bryans latest adventures, like almost falling over the rim into an active volcano or haggling angrily over the price of a cheap necklace in downtown San Jos out of the mailbox and put it in my backpack to read in my less-than-exciting Environmental Science class. Around late junior year, I started to get letters from universities I had applied to. I even corresponded briefly with the Navy ROTC program but was not successful in my attempts to convince them that they would benefit from my interest in creative writing.

Early in my senior year I first read The Catcher in the Rye and started saying if you want to know the truth at the end of my sentences. During second semester I read the rest of Salingers books and some of his uncollected stories at the local public library and realized that Salingers characters were also quite fond of sending and receiving mail.

During college at the University of Minnesota I wrote mostly long, gloomy letters to myself and killed time by building makeshift furniture out of my New Yorker subscription in my dorm room. I corresponded briefly with a girl I liked in high school but never talked to because I thought I was too inexperienced. In one letter she wrote that shed had a serious crush on me for a long time and wondered, Why didnt you ever ask me out on a date?