WEBVTT - The Life and Works of J.D. Salinger 0:00:00.800 --> 0:00:02.920 Hey, everybody, we want to let you know that we 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:07.280 are doing our traditional Pacific Northwest Swing for our live 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:11.320 show next year, in fact, the end of January next year, 0:00:11.480 --> 0:00:12.760 very early next year, and. 0:00:12.720 --> 0:00:16.239 We're starting out in Seattle, Washington on January twenty fourth 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.520 at the Paramount Theater. It's huge, that's right, and then 0:00:19.600 --> 0:00:23.040 on to Portland on January twenty fifth at Revolution Hall, 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.360 the place we always are. It's kind of our home 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.800 away from home in Portland. And then we're going to 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:30.280 wrap it all up at the thing that started the 0:00:30.320 --> 0:00:33.760 Pacific Northwest Tour in the first place all those years back. 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.240 SF Sketch Fest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.080 on Friday, January twenty sixth, right, Chuck. 0:00:40.080 --> 0:00:42.240 That's right, And remember you can go to stuff youshould 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.040 Know dot com click on tours in order to get 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:47.680 to the correct ticket link or go to the venue 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.159 page only. Do not go to scalper sites. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:52.520 That's right, and we'll see you guys in January. 0:00:52.680 --> 0:01:04.080 Okay, welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:08.320 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:13.520 Jerry's here too. We just want to be alone, which 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.679 makes this stuff. You should know. That's right. That was 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.000 Greta Garbo doing JD. Salinger. 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:21.560 Oh I've never heard that. 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:24.280 You never heard Greta Garbo say that I vanted to 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:24.960 be alone? 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:25.800 No? 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.000 I haven't. Oh yeah, another recluse, right. 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.679 Yes, that's why I said that she could really probably 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:33.120 identify with JD's Salinger. 0:01:34.360 --> 0:01:37.000 Yeah, what Sallenger? Have you read? If any? 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:42.479 I read for Esme with Love and Squalor as recently 0:01:42.520 --> 0:01:47.680 as last night, and it's good. 0:01:47.720 --> 0:01:48.480 Huh. 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:51.400 It was great. I actually feel like I really missed 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.080 out not reading Salinger twenty years ago or thirty years 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:58.160 ago something like that. I just didn't and I don't 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:01.440 know why. But yeah, he was really good. 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:06.000 Yeah. I was an English major, so I read a 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:09.640 lot of his stuff. Catcher in the Rye was one 0:02:09.680 --> 0:02:12.799 that I'm actually do because I would. I was doing 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:14.440 a thing where I was kind of rereading it every 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:18.120 ten years or so, because that's a book wherein your 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:22.519 perspective as a reader can really change how you view 0:02:22.560 --> 0:02:25.280 the book. And I found that after I reread it 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:26.960 the second time, and I was like, hey, wait a minute, 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.840 I should reread this thing like every decade or so 0:02:29.840 --> 0:02:34.680 so I'm definitely due. And then I read nine Stories. 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:37.520 I read almost all of the Glass Family stuff. I 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.240 read most of this stuff that was popular and widely 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:44.480 available and wasn't just like, you know, something in the 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:46.359 New Yorker that you know was never put in book 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.360 form or whatever. So I read a lot of stuff. 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.520 Yeah, and it sounds like your relationship with Salinger kind 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:57.800 of mirrors my relationship with the early works of Adam Sandler. 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.800 Rewatch Heavy Gilmore probably every ten years to revisit it, 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.680 see how it's changed, because I've changed. 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:12.440 You know, that's really funny. But Adam Sandler isn't as 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:19.080 complicated and potentially troublesome and problematic as JD. Salinger was 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.240 as a person. And what we'll get to all that stuff. 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.919 That sounds like somebody who hasn't really looked into Adam 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:30.560 Sandler's early works. Okay, so yeah, I had no idea 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.320 about the problematicness of JD. Salinger. I just knew he 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:38.320 was a revered writer, a recluse, And now I realized 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:40.480 like he was a really great writer too, in the 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:45.080 most approachable way. But the thing that struck me about 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:47.480 reading about JD. Salinger, which is one of my favorite 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:49.920 things to do, like reading about a good movie or 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:52.840 reading about an author or something like that, so I 0:03:52.880 --> 0:03:55.520 got to do that researching this episode. One of the 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.760 things that struck me is as approachable and almost like 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.040 folksy as his writing. 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:03.640 Is, uh huh, he is. 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:08.680 Beloved by like literati types as well. Yeah, Normally he 0:04:08.720 --> 0:04:11.400 would be pooh pooed and look down upon, And I 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.880 think maybe he was during his career, his actual career, 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:18.679 by some of the more like literati types, but today 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.559 he's as revered as anybody, maybe even more so, because 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:26.240 I think there's also a bit of affection that people 0:04:26.320 --> 0:04:29.520 hold for him and his writing in addition to, you know, 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:31.200 feeling reverent toward it. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.920 Yeah, and I also think the disappearing act added a 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:38.720 lot to his legend. I mean, I'm not the only 0:04:38.760 --> 0:04:41.720 one that thinks set but it's impossible to say what 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.240 that would have looked like had he just kept publishing 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.800 stuff and stayed in the public eye. But when you disappear, 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:50.760 you're going to add a lot of mystique and interest, 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:53.839 I think, yeah, exactly. And by the way, if you 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.640 hear some distant construction noise today, there's nothing I can 0:04:56.680 --> 0:04:57.159 do about that. 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.080 Oh, I hope that came through in the Crane episode. 0:05:00.400 --> 0:05:02.080 I don't think it did so. 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.120 Yeah, if you've never heard of JD. Salinger, we should 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.520 probably give you a little background. He published The Catcher 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:10.800 in the Rye in nineteen fifty one. It dropped like 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:15.560 a neutron bomb on America and essentially created the current 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:21.320 popular image of a teenager, especially disaffected, disillusioned teenagers who 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:24.560 are starting to realize like the world is not what 0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.520 they've been told it is their entire lives up to 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:28.640 that point. 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:29.200 Phony. 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:30.440 Perhaps he started that. 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:33.160 Yeah, phony, He is that word a lot. 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:37.200 Yeah, phony, and it's hilarious. It's a hilarious word, especially 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:38.400 when you use it earnestly. 0:05:39.040 --> 0:05:40.320 Yeah, I agree, I like it. 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:43.920 But that was like the protagonist of Ketcher in the 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.880 Rye is probably his favorite word. Holden Callfield's favorite word 0:05:46.920 --> 0:05:49.240 was phony. And that's pretty much all you need to know. 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:51.760 We can end the episode here, really. 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:54.839 Or we could go back to when he was born. 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:55.359 Sure. 0:05:55.880 --> 0:06:00.000 Jerome David Salinger and Manhattan, New York in nineteen nineteen 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:05.200 on New Year's Day to Miriam Sallenger and Soul Sallenger. 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:08.279 He has a sister, named Or had a sister named Doris. 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.120 It was seven years older that he remained close to, 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:14.560 and he was Sonny to his parents and his sister. 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.520 His dad was Jewish and was he was an executive. 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:22.760 He worked for a meat and cheese importing business and 0:06:22.880 --> 0:06:25.760 was not super close to his son. He didn't get 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.760 his writing. He was sort of that, you know, kind 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:31.400 of what you would think of the nineteen twenties and 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:34.600 thirties father who just wasn't much of a father, wasn't 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.320 around much, didn't put a lot, didn't invest a lot 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.920 of time and his children, while his mom, Miriam, was 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.640 the opposite. She was a very doting mother, Irish Catholic 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:50.599 woman who loved Sonny. Young j D. Thought he was 0:06:50.640 --> 0:06:53.680 going to be a great writer. He would joke at 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:55.840 one point to his friend that she walked me to 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:59.559 school until I was twenty four years old. Dedicated Ketcher 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.599 to his mom. And there's this very sweet story that 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:04.920 day found he read a full biography. I think of 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:09.840 him for this episode, but when he was eighteen, he 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.960 was working at writing. He wrote from the time he 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.720 was very young, and his mom slipped a little message 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.440 under the door that said, I accept your story. Consider 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.280 it a masterpiece. Check for one thousand dollars in the 0:07:21.320 --> 0:07:25.679 mail Curtis Publishing Company. Pretty neat, pretty great. 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.640 Yeah. So he was raised I guess upper middle class, 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:38.440 and I mean, like that's a that's a pretty typical combination, 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:41.920 like a distant father and a doting mom. Yeah, that 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:43.680 produces a certain kind of kid, and it seemed to 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:47.400 have produced J. D. Salinger pretty pretty predictably. But the 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.000 fact that he grew up on Park Avenue in Manhattan 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.760 and went to camp with other Jewish kids every summer, 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:58.640 like he had like a very typical I guess childhood, 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.200 but that seemed to have converged with like a pretty 0:08:02.240 --> 0:08:07.520 sensitive type. Like he was a sensitive person and that 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:10.400 allowed him to kind of see things for you know, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.960 what they really were, and he also had a talent 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:17.320 for putting that into understandable language, and all of that 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:20.680 put together made him the amazing writer that he became. 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.240 Yeah. Absolutely, he was going by Jerry to his friends 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:29.520 and people that he knew personally, and enrolled initially at 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.240 a place called McBurnie Preparatory School, a private school on 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:36.479 the Upper West Side, And he was kind of a 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:41.480 kind of a wise acre little sardonic, little sarcastic. He 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:45.440 did not make great grades. They pulled him out after 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.040 his sophomore year and sent him to military school, Valley 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:52.240 Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. And this was a direct 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.600 model for if you've read Ketcher and the Rye of 0:08:54.640 --> 0:08:58.439 Holden Callfield's Pencey Prep School. It was a very kind 0:08:58.440 --> 0:09:02.440 of autobiographical in some ways. Take you know, we'll also 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.360 talk about some ways where he diverged from Holden call 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:07.120 Field for sure, but he was a big he like, 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:09.520 he did great. That was one of the big differences 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.680 his Holden Callfield was not happy at Pency Prep. And 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:15.040 it seemed that jad Salinger really got a lot out 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.120 of Valley Forge and was very, very active. 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.760 Yeah, he was. He joined the drama club. He found acting, 0:09:20.840 --> 0:09:24.000 which apparently was something I think he discovered acting at 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.840 camp one year and was like, I love this. So 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.520 he did every play he possibly could. At Valley Forge. 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.960 He was the editor of the yearbook. I mean, like, 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:37.040 you know, disaffected, isolated types don't usually become editors of 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.000 the yearbook at their school. Yeah, for sure. It was 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:45.199 a real distinction between his experience in Holden Callfield's experience 0:09:46.200 --> 0:09:49.360 When he got to college, though, it was a different story, 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:55.200 and probably because Valley Forge was very structured and rigid 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.080 and he knew what to expect and he thrived in that. 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:00.640 As we'll see, he also seemed to have drive fairly 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:04.760 well in the Army. In college, one of the first 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.400 things you realize is like nobody's keeping tabs on you, 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.440 Like you have to motivate yourself to get up into 0:10:10.480 --> 0:10:13.960 a class, and that can be really difficult. It's difficult 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:17.599 for everybody at first typically, but it can be like 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.160 like a non starter for some people who are ironically 0:10:21.200 --> 0:10:22.240 non starters. 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.520 Yeah. I remember in college, I was eager and I 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:28.480 was all in. But you skip your first class and 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.200 then you're like, oh, wait a minute, you can do that, 0:10:31.440 --> 0:10:32.760 and nobody nobody. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.040 Yeah, you hit out in your apartment the whole day 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.160 waiting to get in trouble, and nobody came. 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:39.840 Sometimes the teachers keep track. I remember in college some 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.080 of them kept a certain amount of absences were allowed 0:10:43.120 --> 0:10:45.160 or whatever, but some didn't at all. The big classes 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:47.600 and the teachers like, hey, you don't have to be 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:49.760 here if you don't want to. It's like it's to 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:51.439 your detriment, and you will learn that. 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:53.000 You'd be like, why do you have to say our 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.920 last part? It was going so well. 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:58.880 He found that, like you said, at college, he went 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:01.600 to NYU, but there in Greenwich Village there were too 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:04.920 many other things going on at that time. He flunked out, 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.480 and his father was like, all right, you should get 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.800 into business, like you know, follow your old man into 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.240 the meat and cheese business. So he shipped him off 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:17.760 to Poland in nineteen thirty seven to study under the 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.880 bacon king of Poland, not the sausage king of Chicago. 0:11:21.880 --> 0:11:26.480 And Salinger was like, this is gross. I'm not doing this. 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:28.920 He went to Vienna and lived with a Jewish family 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:32.400 and fell in love. He learned German and fell in 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.760 love with their daughter, and very sadly that family did 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:38.880 not make it through the war. He left in nineteen 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.480 thirty eight, just before the Nazis came into power, and 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.600 that family did not survive, and he wrote a short 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.600 story a sort of fictionalized version of that many years later, 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:50.840 called A Girl I Knew. 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:55.840 Yeah, he tried college again here going to a place 0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.200 called Ursinius, Orsinius Ursinus. That's what I'm going with your 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:05.840 valley Fords in Pennsylvania and didn't work out again. Then 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:08.120 he when he came back home, he said, all right, 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.000 I'm just going to become a writer. And his mom 0:12:11.120 --> 0:12:13.679 was like, all right, that's cool, and his dad was like, no, 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:16.120 you're going to get in the ham and cheese business, 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:18.640 like I said. And apparently they came up with a 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:22.840 compromise that he would take writing classes at NY you 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.280 were Columbia. I can't remember which one. I think Columbia 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.080 and he locked out by taking a class by given 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:34.800 by the editor Whitburnett. And Whitburnett had a knack along 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:38.599 with his wife, who also edited this magazine Story Magazine, 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.920 his wife Hallie or Hayley, they had discovered or would 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:45.679 go on to discover some pretty like a pretty amazing 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:46.720 stable of writers. 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.080 If you ask y, Yeah, for sure you should go 0:12:50.080 --> 0:12:52.120 ahead get such a great setup, set yourself up. 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:57.000 Oh oh thanks. There was Williams Common Tennessee mm HM 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:02.240 Truman Capote who well known for his his rough and 0:13:02.280 --> 0:13:08.160 tumble westerns, and Norman Mahler who wrote The Jeffersons. 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:13.080 Yeah, if you've got you've got Norman Maylor, Treatman Compodi Tennessee, 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:15.560 Williams and J. D. Salinger on your list of writers 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:17.960 you've discovered, you're doing pretty well. 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:22.800 Yeah, it's amazing, like they basically discovered the who's who 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.760 of twentieth century men writers. 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:32.880 Yeah, absolutely so he at well, how'd you say it, personists? 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:33.920 Uh? 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.679 Or yeah, yeah, at ersiness. It was sort of like 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.600 other college He wasn't taking it super seriously until one day, 0:13:40.679 --> 0:13:44.640 as the story goes, wit Burnett was reading aloud the 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:49.600 Faulkner short story that evening sun and he didn't apparently 0:13:49.640 --> 0:13:52.280 didn't like read it very dramatically. He just sort of 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:56.120 read it straight, just read the words as they were, 0:13:56.400 --> 0:14:00.800 and Sallenger something about that really to hold of him, 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.160 and he said, this is the way forward for me. 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:05.800 I want to write in a way that doesn't get 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.040 in the way of a reader want I want the 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:12.920 reader to discover the emotion and the meaning by reading 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.920 it in you know, maybe a podcaster one day. We'll 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.120 read Catcher in the Rye every ten years and take 0:14:18.160 --> 0:14:21.840 a different meaning because I han't explicitly sort of said 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:24.720 what the meaning is, and like you were saying that 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:29.400 his writing was. It wasn't fancy. It was very sort 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:31.560 of plain and accessible, and that's I think why he 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:33.160 got through to so many people. 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:38.080 Yeah, The thing is is, I don't know if it's 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:41.480 his attention to detail or is I for detailers as 0:14:41.720 --> 0:14:45.400 ability to describe things in detail without becoming bogged down 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:46.080 by them. 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.440 Who knows, But I just think that it's such an 0:14:49.480 --> 0:14:53.160 amazing epiphany to realize that probably up to that point 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.200 he'd been trying to lead readers along around by the 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.720 nose feel this, like you should be feeling this right now. 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:03.000 Instead to realize like, no, you can write in a 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.840 way where you leave it up to the reader, Like, yeah, 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.240 that's probably one of the best epiphanies a writer can 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:12.080 possibly have. And I haven't run across that very often, 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.640 Like it's rare, I think to see there's a specific 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:21.080 epiphany that creates the writer that everybody comes to love. 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.720 That's not everybody has that kind of thing. 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:27.040 Yeah, he stopped ending every chapter with get it. 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.440 What's funny is he didn't. He decided to just kind 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:32.920 of get out of the reader's way and let them 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:35.120 figure it out for themselves. But he was also the 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:40.240 king of italics to emphasize points like oh this word, 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.280 this is an important word. That's what italics says, and 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.360 he used italics like constantly. 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:49.720 Yeah. So he failed that class, but he re enrolled 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.840 in that same class, this time with a little more spunk, 0:15:52.920 --> 0:15:56.080 I think, and gave Burnett some of his stories, and 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.080 Burnett immediately knew that he had a pretty sharp talent 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:03.920 on his hands and mentored young Salinger and published his 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:07.480 first work, called The Young Folks in the spring nineteen 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:10.480 forty edition of Story, in which he was paid twenty 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.120 five bucks, which is a little more than five hundred today, 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:16.920 not bad. And he just kept writing, just writing and 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.400 writing and writing. One thing has been made clear about J. D. 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.520 Salinger up to his death at ninety one years old 0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:27.120 is that he loved to write and wrote and wrote 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.560 and wrote and wrote always. He didn't publish a lot, 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.560 and we'll get to all that, but doesn't mean he 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:34.520 wasn't writing. He was writing from the time he was 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.440 a teenager un till he died. He always wanted to 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.600 be published in the New Yorker. That was this big dream. 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:44.560 They turned him down seven times until they accepted Slight 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.520 Rebellion off Madison and forty one, which had the character 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:50.880 of Holden call Field, the first story that had Holden 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:57.400 and very disappointingly after Pearl Harbor, they shelved the story 0:16:57.600 --> 0:17:01.920 for five years, and you know, it just wasn't a 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:03.560 time to publish a story like that. 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:06.480 I guess, yeah, no, for sure. They said, don't you know, 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:10.040 there's a war going on, and I say, we take 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:13.159 a break and come back and join JD. Salinger in 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:13.600 the war. 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:15.119 Let's do it. 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:41.560 Okay, So JD. Salinger when war broke out, When America 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:44.639 entered World War Two, he signed up, He enlisted. He 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:49.119 actually tried to go to Officers School and they were like, nah, 0:17:49.359 --> 0:17:51.680 you're a little a little too fresh for us. 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:54.359 So we ended up think you nowadays you have to 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:56.560 have a college degree to get into OCS. I don't 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:57.600 know if it was the case back then. 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.840 It could have been, who knows, but he was. He 0:18:00.119 --> 0:18:03.920 just went from you know, base to base, just doing 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.040 mundane stuff, probably not loving life too much, but I'm 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:08.440 sure he had a lot of free time to write 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:13.640 and wrote wrote. And then it wasn't until I think 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:19.040 nineteen forty four that he ended up on in Europe 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:24.439 and his movements and the participation of the events that 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:28.320 he took place in from June of nineteen forty four 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.879 through the winter of nineteen forty five. He was basically 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:37.359 at every major event in the European theater, everything from 0:18:37.520 --> 0:18:42.000 landing on Utah Beach in Day Day to liberating the 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:46.440 camp at Dachau. Like he was literally there and participated 0:18:46.440 --> 0:18:49.000 in all of that stuff. And the fact that he 0:18:49.119 --> 0:18:53.439 survived is intense. Like he was in some of the 0:18:53.480 --> 0:18:57.679 most intense fighting that the entire war saw over the 0:18:57.840 --> 0:18:59.880 course of like you know, a year. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:04.439 Basically, Yeah, that reminds me of how maybe Jerry can 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:08.520 bleep this The great line from Rushmore when Max first 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.280 meets Bill Murray's character and he says he was in Vietnam. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:13.200 He goes, were you in the Yeah, I was a 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:18.040 good line. J. D. Salinger certainly was, like you said. 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:22.920 And interestingly he had when he stormed the beach at 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.600 Utah Beach on D Day, he had the beginnings of 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:29.200 Ketcher and the Rye in his knapsack. He was working 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:34.000 on that book already. He only wrote about the war 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.000 through the short story The Magic Foxhole, where he wrote 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:40.600 about D Day. He did not talk about it much. 0:19:41.080 --> 0:19:44.040 It is clear that it informed the rest of his life, though, 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:47.199 And we'll talk about you know, those moments you know 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.360 as we go along through his life, but I think 0:19:50.400 --> 0:19:54.080 two thirds of his regiment died within the first few weeks, 0:19:54.080 --> 0:19:57.520 close to two thirds after D Day. So it was 0:19:57.680 --> 0:20:02.600 pretty brutal stuff, you know, the bleakest battles you can imagine. 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.160 Being pinned down in the hurricane forest in Germany, thousands 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.840 of people were freezing to death. He survived that, and then, 0:20:12.320 --> 0:20:15.800 like you said, at Dachau in nineteen forty five, apparently 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.640 on the same day that Hitler shot himself, they came 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:23.640 upon Dachau and he talked about never in your life 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:25.960 not being able to, you know, get the smell of 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:27.520 burning flesh out of his nose. 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.200 Yeah. He was also in the Battle of the Bulge 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:35.160 that finally turned the tide against the Germans in World 0:20:35.200 --> 0:20:40.000 War Two, where seventy five thousand German soldiers died. Like 0:20:40.480 --> 0:20:43.480 this was over the course of weeks, tens and tens 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:46.000 of thousands of people dying all around you all the time. 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.080 He was there for all that, and he eventually became 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.399 I guess, an officer at the very Yeah, he was 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:58.040 a counterintelligence officer. His specialty was interrogating people. He used 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:00.399 the German that he picked up when he with that 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.639 family in Vienna just before the Nazis came to power 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:07.359 to interrogate Nazis that he ended up capturing, you know, 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:10.439 less than a decade later. Quite a turn of events 0:21:10.480 --> 0:21:11.359 if you think about it. 0:21:12.160 --> 0:21:15.359 Yeah, and pretty heavy stuff. And for all of this, 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:21.200 on V Day they say stick around. We don't want 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:23.240 you to go home. We'd like you to stick around 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.480 for a denazification mission. So all of a sudden he 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.040 was pulled away from his twelfth Regiment and the friends 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:33.040 he had met there, and he got depressed, and you know, 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:35.960 he was clearly affected with PTSD. They call it battle 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.679 fatigue at the time, and he checked himself into a 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:44.119 hospital at Nuremberg for PTSD treatment and eventually, well you 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:46.960 read it for Esme with love and Squalor is a 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.159 story about a World War two vet recovering from PTSD 0:21:50.240 --> 0:21:50.760 in Germany. 0:21:51.000 --> 0:21:52.280 Yeah, it's a wonderful story. 0:21:53.880 --> 0:21:54.280 You know what. 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:57.160 I just realized his stories, or at least the one 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:00.960 I read, But from reading about other stories, they seem 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:03.199 to have kind of like an O Henry quality of 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.920 things surprisingly turning out for the best in the end. 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:08.840 Is that correct? 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:10.840 Uh? Yeah? 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:15.200 Like he was optimistic, hopeful, like eventually he was hopeful. 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:18.199 It seems like in most of his stories, maybe not 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.280 a good day for banana fish, but some of the 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.080 other ones. All the most of the other ones, he 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.760 seemed to just be a sentimentalist. I guess where it 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:30.800