J. D. Salinger’s army prose: the beginnings of a classic (1940–1943)

Abstract

The article considers Jerome David Salinger’s short stories written and published in the years from 1940 to 1943, during his time in army training camps ahead of combat deployment. Using archived materials, the author cites letters and reminiscences of Salinger’s contemporaries, reconstructs the history of his early publications, and seeks to define their place in the writer’s oeuvre. In the early 1940s, Salinger was honing his writing style in the early works that channelled his personal preoccupations and anxiety, often related to his army experience (‘The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,’ ‘Personal Notes of an Infantryman,’ ‘The Hang of It,’ and ‘Soft-Boiled Sergeant’). The early short stories talk about the dashed ideals of youth, attempts to resist corruption in the face of unspeakable hardship, and the fear of the looming war. The article examines the genesis of Salinger’s early prose, which, despite its commercial expectations, provided a foundation for the characters of Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass in the writer’s mature works.