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    Sergeant Salinger
    Sergeant Salinger
    Sergeant Salinger
    Ebook289 pages3 hours

    Sergeant Salinger

    By Jerome Charyn

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A shattering biographical novel of J.D. Salinger in combat

    “Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons.” —New Yorker

    J.D. Salinger, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a reclusive misanthrope. Jerome Charyn’s Salinger is a young American WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war—from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the first Allied entry into a Bavarian death camp, where corpses were piled like cordwood.

    After the war, interned in a Nuremberg psychiatric clinic, Salinger became enchanted with a suspected Nazi informant. They married, but not long after he brought her home to New York, the marriage collapsed. Maladjusted to civilian life, he lived like a “spook,” with invisible stripes on his shoulder, the ghosts of the murdered inside his head, and stories to tell.

    Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, Sergeant Salinger is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations.

    Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin. He lives in New York.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBellevue Literary Press
    Release dateJan 5, 2021
    ISBN9781942658757
    Author

    Jerome Charyn

    Jerome Charyn (b. 1937) is the critically acclaimed author of nearly fifty books. Born in the Bronx, he attended Columbia College. After graduating, he took a job as a playground director and wrote in his spare time, producing his first novel, a Lower East Side fairytale called Once Upon a Droshky, in 1964. In 1974, Charyn published Blue Eyes, his first Isaac Sidel mystery. This first in the so-called Sidel quartet introduced the eccentric, near-mythic Sidel, and his bizarre cast of sidekicks. Although he completed the quartet with Secret Isaac (1978), Charyn followed the character through Under the Eye of God. Charyn, who divides his time between New York and Paris, is also accomplished at table tennis, and once ranked amongst France’s top 10 percent of ping-pong players.

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    Reviews for Sergeant Salinger

    4.5/5

    28 ratings12 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Written in novel form, this fascinating look at the formative years of reclusive author J.D. Salinger traces the events just prior to and during World War II that shaped his worldview and later, his fiction. Like so many from his generation, he served in a war that held atrocities humanity had scarcely imagined, and as a member of the Counterintelligence Corp, Salinger was witness to more than most. It was inevitable that these experiences changed him as both a person and as a writer. Charyn handles Salinger's story with grace and an eye for detail, and I really felt as if I gained a greater insight into one of the great minds of his generation. That he was scarred by what he witnessed and suffered from PTSD now seems beyond doubt. That he and those around him suffered is a tragedy, but Charyn did the job of telling that story justice.
    • 4/5
      This is a very creative approach to examining the development and eventual artistry of J.D. Salinger. The book is a historical fiction work on Salinger's life in the U.S. military during WWII and the possible effects of that time period on his own eventual publications. The book seems well researched and does a very good job with character development, introspection, and pacing. The story by itself is an interesting read with a fascinating plot but challenges the reader further by giving them food for thought at what might lay behind the mind of the reclusive Salinger when he began his own writing career.
    • 5/5
      J.D. "Sonny" Salinger as a CIC (counter intelligence) sergeant saw action in Europe in WWII. Still obsessed with Oona O'Neill Chaplin, he cleaned up the mess at Slapton Sands, landed in the second wave at Utah Beach, Normandy on D-Day, arrived in Paris for the liberation and encountered Hemingway at the Ritz, suffered through the Hurtgen Forest to the Ardennes Battle of the Bulge, witnessed the newly-liberated survivors of Kaufering Lager IV (an outlier of Dachau), committed himself to Krankenhaus 31, reenlisted for six additional months at Nurenberg. Overkill! If this were created by a novelist from whole cloth, an editor would say, "Too much!" but this is what Salinger did.Jerome Charyn is the novelist here though, and he chronicles each step on this incredible journey and subtly draws us into Salinger's dissolution.(More to follow. It's too late at this point, and I can't think.)
    • 4/5
      A thoughtful, tense, pulsating look at the reclusive author J.D Salinger during World War II. My personal favorite is definitely the chapter set in the Stork Club, all of the people involved Salinger, Oona O’Neill, Frank Costello, Herman Melville, and the grand master of the scene Walter Winchell. I would love to read an entire book on just that.
    • 3/5
      This novel is based on fact. The author has built a story on a young J.D. Salinger and his love for Oona O’Neill, his time in the army in counterintelligence and his life when he got home. Since Sallinger was a somewhat a recluse, it was interesting how the author got to portray him. I found myself going online to check the facts and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were true. It deal a lot with the horrors of war and what life was like back then. The characters were interesting and some parts were more interesting to me than others.
    • 4/5
      *I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*Prior to this novel, I knew of J.D. Salinger only as the author of Catcher in the Rye, but in addition to writing a masterpiece, Salinger served in the military during WWII and witnessed many of the horrors of war. Those horrors fill the psychological space of this novel - Salinger is part of the Counter Intelligence Corps, meaning he investigates suspected Nazis and their informants. In this role, Salinger chases shady characters around northern France, arresting and interrogating possible SS officers, and witnessing the horrors of the camps. These sights take a toll, which is how Salinger ends up in a psychiatric clinic and is the mercy of a pretty and deceptive doctor. Overall, this novel made for interesting reading, but it was also hard to read (violence, executions, etc.) as well.
    • 4/5
      I loved Charyn's novel, JERZY, his fictional bio of Jerzy Kosinski, so had high hopes for this treatment of J.D. Salinger's war years. Alas, I found it to be glacially slow and disappointingly dull, despite its occasional flashes of snappy dialogue and flights of imaginative fancy. There are occasional references to the Holden Caulfield novel-in-progress that he lugs around the battlefields of Europe, where he purportedly crossed paths with Hemingway a couple of times, as well as an offhand comment calling the shell-shocked Sonny Salinger a soldier of "glass." And, postwar, there is an encounter between Sonny and some children on a Florida beach that calls to mind a story his father had once told him about "banana fish." The truth is, even with its myriad flashbacks to Salinger's childhood and adolescence, as well as a faithful adherence to the timeline of battles that he was part of and French and German locales he passed through during the war, SERGEANT SALINGER never quite comes to life in the way JERZY did. Perhaps it's because not a whole lot is really known about Salinger's experiences in the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. And Charyn's book does little to cast light on those years. I think I found Kenneth Slawenski's biography of Salinger more entertaining. However, fans of Salinger's fiction who have NOT read much about his real life might enjoy it more than I did. So, pretty good, but not great.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 4/5
      Charyn finds little mystery in the famously mysterious J.D. Salinger. He makes a persuasive case for the reclusive author suffering from a wartime case of what we refer to today as PTSD. He further suggests that Salinger’s wartime exploits should have equipped him to write the quintessential war novel (e.g., “The Naked and the Dead” or “Catch 22”). Instead, the disillusioned Salinger turned his focus inward, possibly because of the horrors he may have seen, and the forced moral conflicts required by his assignment to counterintelligence. Charyn admirably evokes the horror and ambiguity with Salinger’s ordered cover-up of the Slapton Sounds fiasco, his decisions, contrary to orders, to protect friends and connected Nazis, his rescue of a sexually abused child from a death camp, his amorous escapades with the German doctor/spy, Silvia Welter, and especially his postwar self-commitment to a mental hospital.Notwithstanding the cultlike status he enjoyed from his “Holden Caulfield novel”, Salinger’s failure to leave much of a footprint leaves Charyn with little more to work with than speculation built on the historical record. Although Charyn’s depiction of Salinger’s coming-of-age is quite poignant, his fictional exploits seem improbable. Why place Salinger at every big event in the European theater (Utah Beach on D-Day, the deliverance of Paris, the Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of the death camp at Dachau)? Similarly, why include celebrities like Walter Winchell, Earnest Hemingway, Frank Costello, and Eugene O’Neill’s daughter? All of this seems gratuitous and only suggests that the story may be too contrived to be believable. What is missing is the internal life that a retelling of the historical record, no matter how personalized, simply can’t provide.With this being said, Charyns treatment of the Salinger family is loving, humorous, and entirely believable. Despite her not being Jewish, his mother, Miriam, is the classic Jewish mother. She is a lovable mixture of kvetching and caring, sending wool socks with every mailing while complaining about his war bride. His father, Sol’s focus is primarily business. Although undoubtedly true, the importation of ham by a Jewish businessman seems farfetched. Salinger’s sister, Doris, is the most likeable family member. She is a protective and loving older sibling, who takes charge at all the right moments.Despite its flaws, SERGEANT SALINGER is an engaging story that raises intriguing suggestions about the hypothetical birth of one of our most cherished coming-of-age stories of youthful disillusionment.
    • 5/5
      I can only really judge "Sergeant Salinger" as a fictional narrative, as I haven't studied Salinger's life much myself and can't judge in that regard. It's also been a while since I read Salinger's work. That said, even without context, this book was incredible. I've read some of Charyn's historical fiction before (Jerzy, The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson), so I knew he was a great writer, but he seriously outdoes himself here. He goes to some dark places, and renders those scenes in vivid, horrific detail... I think in some regards I enjoyed this book more since I went in "blind."Honestly I was never the biggest Salinger fan, but I feel pretty inspired to read him again now.
    • 5/5
      J. D. Salinger, the highly acclaimed author of " The Catcher in the Rye" never spoke of his years of service during WWII. As a draftee he was assigned to the C.I.C. department of the Army, which was the Counter Intelligence Corps. Here he witnessed every atrocity imaginable, while it was his job to seek out collaborators and interrogate them. Always working in the shadows, never really a part of the regular soldiers. Salinger was there for the worse of the war, he witnessed a training mission for D-day that was performed at Slapton Sands go horribly wrong, killing hundreds of our own soldiers. He was there with the second wave on the beaches of Normandy, fought through the Battle of the Bulge, and was at the liberation of one of the first Nazi death camps, the stench of burning human flesh still lingering in the air. Through Jerome Charyn's brilliant rendition of Salinger's life just prior to and directly after the war, we can determine what Sonny, as he was called experienced and how those experiences had a profound long-term affect on him and his writing. Charyn's style of writing fits the story like a glove. It transports the reader to another time and place so we feel what Salinger felt. There are times in the book where Sonny feels as if he is losing his marbles, as it is so eloquently described, where people, places and events have taken on a surreal feeling. With Charyn's intelligent, witty prose he captures these moments spectacularly and sheds some insight into what made Salinger the man the world came to know. This book has made me want to go back and reread all of Salinger's works, and to read them with a different eye, one opened to new insight and understanding of the man behind the books. A 5 star read for sure, a must read for all J. D. Salinger fans. I can't imagine anyone passing this book up. It is truly brilliant. I received my ARC of this book free from the publisher and in return I am giving my honest review. #SergeantSalinger#JeromeCharyn#BellevueLiteraryPress#LibraryThing
    • 5/5
      In high-school the first novels I ever competed reading were The Catcher in The Rye and Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine. For different reasons both novels left me transformed - opened my eyes to something entirely different. They revealed to me words and thoughts that felt like they could be my own but also simultaneously beyond myself. I have a deep love for the work of Bradbury and Salinger and it is the mystery around Salinger that I find appealing. So, it was a pleasure to read Jerome Charyn's novel Sergeant Salinger that multiplies and intensifies the mystery and uncertainty around Salinger. I love how the novel does not seek to give a clear-er picture of Salinger and closes out with him struggling to create his to-be classic works. Sergeant Salinger is for me an expertly conceived novel written to portray a man seeking to create art while struggling with life and suffering from ptsd. Suffering from shell-shock and heart break. As ever Bellevue literary press is publishing work that is illuminating and challenging and most importantly literary and beautiful. I loved this novel and highly recommend it.
    • 5/5
      The inimitable Jerome Charyn has turned his pen to probe the transformative war experiences of one of America's most famous writers, J.D. Salinger. Like so many of his generation, WWII left its indelible footprints on Salinger, as manifested in his stories and his troubled life.Charyn begins with Sonny Salinger as a lovestruck Park Avenue boy with a few stories under his belt. Sonny was smitten with teenage vamp Oona O'Neill, but Oona had big plans; he was merely a pleasant diversion.The army decided to overlook Sonny's heart murmur and called him to duty. Sonny went overseas, a secret counterintelligence agent whose job was to seek out and interrogate Nazi collaborators. Oona went to Hollywood where her life plans were altered by Charlie Chaplin. In England, the heartbroken Sonny frequented a local pub, scribbling a story about Holden Caulfield at war.Sonny experienced the most atrocious killing fields of WWII.There was Devon's Slapton Sands where 1700 GIs rehearsing for Utah Beach were killed by friendly fire. He was at Utah Beach on D-Day, and at the Battle of the Bulge, and he saw the first liberation of a concentration camp.Sonny was tasked with sniffing out Nazis and Nazi collaborators in every hamlet. He knew that the people he interrogated were as broken by the war as he was.The depravity and waste of war was overwhelming. Sonny became a ghost. Frayed, he secretly checked into a German civilian hospital.Back at work as 'the grand inquisitor', one of the doctors who had nursed Sonny was brought before him for interrogation. He married her, and with fake papers, brought his German Nazi bride home to America to meet his Jewish family.The marriage failed.Charyn includes images from Salinger's fiction, especially the Nine Stories--an Eisenhower coat, Sonny at the beach making sand castles with children and remembering Bananafish, hanging in British pubs to write. Salinger's Glass family are referenced, and the carousel in Central Park. Guest appearances are made by Hemingway and Teddy's son General Roosevelt.In 2018 I reviewed Eberhard Alsen's book J.D.Salinger and the Nazis. When I last read The Catcher in the Rye for book club in 2016, I considered how PTSD influencing the novel. Charyn draws readers on a journey into the darkness of monstrous carnage. As I read, joy was sucked from my world, colors faded, I felt cheerless. Sonny's disillusion and trauma leaves him a tin man, and we understand, because we feel it, too.A glimmer of hope comes at the end."Whatever music he had lost in the carnage at Slapton Sands, at Hurtgen, and among the smoldering corpses at Kaufering IV had come back."We know the books that Salinger would write and their impact. Instead of Holden Caulfield's war death, he wrote a novel about a teenage Holden who dreams of protecting children from the adult world. He had seen the devaluation of human lives sacrificed to false gods. And we know how damaged he was, how he became an unsettling, mysterious hermit. Charyn's novel leads us to understand the forces that shaped Salinger and inform his writing.I was given an ARC by the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

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