Life Over A Precipice. Diagnosing Jerome David Salinger - Great And Terrible

Jerome Salinger with Sylvia, first wife

There are writers known for one of their works. Everyone knows that Cervantes wrote the novel Don Quixote, and Alexander Griboyedov wrote the play Woe from Wit. When we recall the name of the American writer Jerome David Salinger (1919 - 2010), out of several dozen of his works, only one comes to mind - "The Catcher in the Rye."

Diagnostic guess

Anxiety (avoidant, avoidant) personality disorder is one of the variants of psychopathy; neurotic phobias and depression.

Bad student

Portrait of Jerome Salinger, 1951

Jerome Salinger was born into a wealthy family, but grew up in an environment of psychological "confusion", which was caused by the religious differences of his parents: a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. Perhaps this was the first "abyss" that the child had to overcome. Jerry grew up as a "polite introvert", but due to absent-mindedness and self-absorption, he studied amazingly poorly.

In the spring of 1934, he was expelled from school and transferred to a private one on Long Island, where he continued to receive the lowest grades. Although his mother "adored and carried him in her arms," the ham importing father decided that his son needed discipline. Jerome was sent to a military school.

Oddly enough, the teenager liked the military service, and he was attracted by the drama club "Mask and Spur", where for two years he participated in every performance, playing mostly female roles. It was at the school that he began to compose. Often he had to write by the light of a flashlight under the covers, when the lights in the room were turned off. He wrote a hymn, which is performed at the school's "Last Parade" to this day. But the Valley Forge military college diploma was the first and the last in his life.

Salinger graduated from the Officer-Sergeant School of the Signal Corps

Then the throwing began again: in 1937 he studied at New York University, in 1938 he attended lectures at the College of Pennsylvania, in 1939 he entered Columbia University. But Salinger never graduated from an educational institution without showing any special talents or ambitious aspirations, and in the end he finally fell out with his father, who considered his intention to become a writer ridiculous.

Jerome never realized his parent's dream that his son had mastered the grocery trade. Perhaps this disagreement with his father became the "second abyss" of the future writer. But the third “abyss” that Salinger had to overcome, the national one, turned out to be no less serious.

Before World War II, anti-Semitism reigned in the United States. University professors, people at least well educated, could write the following phrase in the student's profile: "He is a Jew, but he behaves like a Christian." And Salinger was born a "half-breed", which was even worse: he felt like a stranger among the Jews, and in the society of Catholics he was ashamed of his Jewish relatives.

“I love to write, but I write mainly for myself, for my own pleasure. For this, of course, you have to pay: I am considered a strange, unsociable person. "

Mind-blowing war

During the war, Salinger served in counterintelligence

In the spring of 1942, Salinger was drafted into the active army, graduated from the officer-sergeant school of the signal troops and was transferred to continue serving in counterintelligence. Jerome's main job was to interrogate prisoners of war. War experiences deeply affected the writer's psyche.

But even in such an atmosphere, he did not stop composing, sending his notes and stories to American newspapers. At the front, Salinger's significant acquaintance with Ernest Hemingway also took place.

With the end of the war, the past memories and long-suppressed feelings broke out and had a crushing effect on Salinger: he fell into such a deep depression that he could no longer carry out his duties. He had to go to the hospital for a psychiatric examination. But Jerome categorically refused demobilization and retirement due to illness. From the hospital in Nuremberg, he wrote to Hemingway: “I would give my right hand to leave the army, but not with a psychiatric diagnosis … I am contemplating a very sensitive novel, and I do not need to call the author a nutcase by 1950. Yes, I really am a nutcase, but you shouldn't know about this … "The novel that Salinger conceived was" The Catcher in the Rye."

Having recovered from "combat exhaustion", the writer, before returning to his homeland, entered into his first and very strange marriage - he married a former employee of the fascist army, whom he himself had arrested. Jerome brought home his "burning happiness", but the marriage of a Nazi and a Jew was short-lived.

Mute scene

In 1942, Salinger dated the daughter of playwright and Nobel laureate Una O'Neill. But the girl soon chose to marry the already famous Charlie Chaplin.

Fictional life

Since the late forties, Salinger has become more and more interested in Eastern philosophy and religion. Visits New York's Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, retreats to a remote rural area of the state, and reads sacred Hindu texts. Moreover, he bases almost all decisions in his life on the principles of Vedanta.

According to the prescriptions of this teaching, in the second stage of life, a person must become a householder - get married, start a family and provide for it. And Salinger falls in love with sixteen-year-old Claire Douglas, for a whole year he corresponds with her, persuading her to leave school and move to his "house on the mountain", which was a "wreck" far from New York.

Hell in a hut

In the hut, in which Claire was also imprisoned, Jerome did not create any conditions for life. The house had no heating, normal conditions for washing and washing. But Salinger demanded a deliciously cooked dinner and fresh bedding from his girl-wife twice a week.

Claire gave birth to a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Margaret, who left an extremely “revealing” biography about her father. She writes: “The world in which we lived was suspended by my father between a dream and a nightmare, like a swing over an abyss. My parents lived in the world of beautiful dreams they had invented, but at the same time they did not know how and did not want to somehow get along with reality …

I know from my mother's stories that before she and my father got married, they often talked with his friends, traveled to New York or Boston, but by marrying him, she was isolated from everything and everyone to such an extent, that she began to feel like a prisoner. Since the fourth month of her pregnancy, she has not seen anyone.”

Salinger's unsuccessful family life (he married three times; the last time in 66 years, a sixteen-year-old girl), probably turned out to be the last "chasm" that he, having already become a world famous writer, was never able to successfully overcome.

Escape from people

Hard work, even workaholism, cannot be denied to the writer. According to the memoirs of his biographer, Professor John Anru, “every morning Salinger went early to his bunker, where he received lunch, and wrote until late at night, giving strict orders to disturb him only in the event of a house fire … He considered the bunker a safe, safe place, a good place to be creative … The bunker was a holy point that no one else had access to. " Another biographer, Paul Alexander, elaborates: “There were long periods of time when he never left his bunker. He stayed there. There he set up an army bunk. And the phone. The bunker was designed so that he literally never had to go outside."

The unsociable Salinger adored dogs and was ready to be photographed with every mongrel

The literary career of the writer cannot be called cloudless. The criticism of The Catcher in the Rye (1951) was an unexpected blow to two of Salinger's worst phobias - the fear of going insane and the even greater fear that he was not a real writer, but a “fake, fake”. As soon as the book came out, he "broke up with most of the people in his previous life and parted with many of his former friends." Two years after publication, the novel was banned for ideology of hopelessness and profanity, although it was the most studied novel in an American high school. Teachers were even fired for mentioning Salinger's book. In the Soviet Union, this novel (of course, with the necessary cuts) was first translated and published in 1960.

Here are some more lines from my daughter's memoirs dating back to 1964: “Salinger was obsessed with alternative medicine. And he tried any discovery in this area on his own children and on himself. True, the most original methods of maintaining health, such as drinking his own urine, he followed alone. But he practiced homeopathy and acupuncture on all members of the family … Salinger divorced Claire Douglas in 1966, and all his subsequent wives and mistresses were already more than twice his age."

In a black, black room

The interior of the writer's bunker was distinguished by great originality. The second wife, Claire Douglas, writes: “Black sheets, black bookshelves, black coffee table, and so on. All of this was consistent with Salinger's depression. He really did have black holes, falling into which he could hardly move and could only speak."

Diet explorer

JD constantly came up with new diets. For a week I ate only raw vegetables, then ate exclusively protein foods. "His skin began to turn green, taking on a sickly hue, and the smell of death was mixed with his breath," - this is how Margaret described her father's condition during the period of experiments.

Salinger on the cover of TIME Magazine - September 15, 1961

After becoming a famous writer, Jerome tried to minimize contact with others. And this "deviation" continued until old age. So, when he went to lunch at a local restaurant, he ate in the kitchen so as not to meet people. "I want to be left alone, all alone."

This reaction was not the result of a "schizoid withdrawal from the world." Salinger maintained friendly relations, fell in love periodically, traveled throughout the United States and abroad, and hosted guests at his home.

Biographers believe that Salinger was the first celebrity to retire. Almost nothing is known about the last decades of his life. It turned out to be the most successful "escape from fame" in the history of literature.

It can be concluded that the Second World War changed the personality of Salinger, but made him a wonderful artist. Religion provided the consolation he needed, but negatively affected his creativity. In 1965, he stopped publishing his works and began to prepare for the final stage of Vedanta (reincarnation). The writer's heirs refuse to acknowledge the existence of the writer's legendary manuscripts, although there is clear written testimony from eyewitnesses who have seen his manuscripts written over the past fifty years.

Murderous book

The Catcher in the Rye has some tragic associations. So, Mark Chapman, the killer of John Lennon, after the murder, sitting under a street lamp, began to read this particular book. The Catcher in the Rye was also possessed by John Hinckley, who assassinated US President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Sources:

• Denisova S. Uncle Jerome's hut // Story. February 2008. pp. 92–100.
• Pashchenko I. Human Manias. Rostov-on-Don: Phoenix, 2007.
• Shields D., Salerno S. Salinger. M.: Eksmo, 2015.