October 1962 Issue [Article]

J.D. Salinger’s Closed Circuit

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by Mary McCarthy,

A suggestion that the literary hero of the
Younger Set — the Great Phony-slayer — may, just
possibly, be a bit of a phony himself.

WHO is to inherit the mantle of Papa Hemingway? Who if not J. D. Salinger? Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye has a brother in Hollywood who thinks A Farewell to Arms is terrific. Holden does not see how his brother, who is his favorite writer, can like a phony book like that. But the very image of the hero as pitiless phony-detector comes from Hemingway. In Across the River and Into…

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Mary McCarthy

was born in Seattle and educated at Vassar. She writes about Salinger’s strange young characters from Paris, where she now lives. Her novels include The Company She Keeps and The Groves of Academe. In her critical essays, she has dissected such people, institutions, and characters as Vassar girls, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and—in the June 1962 Harper’s—General Macbeth.

J.D. Salinger’s Closed Circuit

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