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I.
When Holden Caulfield decides to kill some time by going to see a war movie, he reflects that "It was probably the worst thing I could've done."1 The movie is about an English soldier "that was in the war and loses his memory in the hospital and all," a soldier who falls in love with a girl over a shared interest in Oliver Twist and starts a publishing company with her, learns he's duke along the way, recovers his memory, and inadvertently sets his ex-fiancée up with his new girl's alcoholic brother; the film "ends up with everybody at this long dinner table laughing their asses off."2 Holden tells the whole story because "it isn't that I'd spoil it for you or anything. There isn't anything to spoil."3 Holden, and many of Salinger's readers as well, have heard this phony kind of story told many times, in many places, before.
The worst part about his cinematic experience is not the movie, however; it is the "lady sitting next to [Holden] who cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried."4 Though her tears might suggest she is "kindhearted as hell," to Holden, she is just the opposite, ignoring the boredom- and need of a bathroom break-of the little kid with her so as not to miss any of the movie. She prefers the phony story, disregarding the discomfort and pain of the person in her care.
Holden's contempt for this phony kind of war story, and for listeners who react like this woman, reflects a view of these kinds of war stories and these kinds of listeners-a view that permeates Salinger's fiction. For many readers, this kind of storytelling about war might seem normal: an ex-soldier, or even a filmmaker's depiction of an ex-soldier, tells an uplifting tale of hope wrested from war's hardship, as the audience listens raptly, tears spilling from their eyes. Such stories, however, peddle a false sense of community and understanding of another's pain. Like the movie Holden sees, they tell phony stories of war that ignore that reality of war's pain, terror and meaninglessness. And like the movie distances the woman from the child's needs, so such stories distance us from the real pain...