"A Girl I Knew" | |
---|---|
Short story by J. D. Salinger | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Publication | |
Published in | Good Housekeeping |
Publication date | February 1948 |
"A Girl I Knew" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the February 1948 issue of Good Housekeeping. [1] [2]
The story begins as the narrator fails out of college. His father offers to send him to Europe to learn languages he could use to help his business. While in Vienna, the narrator meets a girl, Leah. She is Jewish and attempts to give him lessons in German as he introduces her to pieces of Americana. He frequently stumbles over his new language while ingratiating himself with her and her family. They both spend time in his apartment, which is above hers. Some time passes before the narrator transfers to Paris, and then goes back to college in America.
While in school he receives a letter from Leah informing him she is married. As with other letters in Salinger's works, the narrator carries it around with him for some time. News begins to spread that the Nazis have invaded Vienna, and he enlists as an infantryman. Since he is in Intelligence, he uses some of the skills acquired while studying the various languages. The story closes as he is in Vienna, after the war, and hears that Leah is dead. Presumably she was sent to Buchenwald, as the story alludes to this. The narrator finds the apartment, which is now an officer's quarters. He notices everything about it has changed and leaves abruptly. [3]
Salinger enrolled for the autumn semester at New York University in 1936, but dropped out shortly thereafter, having neglected his coursework. [4]
His father, a successful cheese and meat retailer, attempted to entice his son into the family business by sending him to Europe as a translator for business associate Oskar Robinson, a Polish ham importer and slaughterhouse owner. Embarking in April 1937, Salinger traveled to Vienna, Austria via England and France, where he lived with a Jewish family for ten months, improving his bookish German. Working in Robinson’s Bydgoszcz, Poland meatpacking plant, Salinger discovered he was “not suited for his father’s line of work.” [5]
Few details are known about his experiences in Vienna, other than that the 19-year-old Salinger “experienced his first serious romance” with the family’s young daughter. [6]
Salinger witnessed the increasing Nazi-organized anti-Semitic terrorism inflicted on Viennese Jews. An American citizen of Jewish ancestry, Salinger was able to depart for New York in April 1938, shortly before German military forces entered Austria. Slawenski reports that “by 1945, every member of Salinger’s Austrian family had been murdered in the Holocaust.”
Salinger searched, unsuccessfully, to locate the family after the war. “The Girl I Knew” is Salinger’s memorial to the family and, in particular, their daughter. [7]
The story was originally titled "Wien, Wien" ("Vienna, Vienna"). Salinger was deeply resentful the title was changed by the editors of the magazine. [8] [9]
Salinger’s story is more than merely a sentimental reflection on a first romance. The horrifying fate of Leah and her parents is personified in an American social type, here a US army sergeant who provides security at the family's former residence, now occupied by commissioned officers. John, wishing to view the apartment where he last saw Leah, explains to the sergeant: “She and her family were burned to death in an incinerator, I’m told.” The sergeant responds with brutal disregard: “Yeah? What was she, a Jew of something?” [10]
From this exchange, Kenneth Slawenski identifies the central theme of “A Girl I Knew”:
Although not directly guilty of the death of Leah and her family, [the American sergeant] is held nonetheless responsible because of his attitude and the realization that without such indifference the Holocaust would never have taken place. The character of Leah therefore represents more than a romantic interest...she symbolizes the fragile and beautiful things that have been crushed by the Second World War...her treatment even after her death touches on a broader moral issue: the very nature of humankind and our ability to commit or condone atrocities through indifference. [11]
"Hapworth 16, 1924" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger that appeared in the June 19, 1965, issue of The New Yorker.
"For Esmé—with Love and Squalor" is a short story by J. D. Salinger. It recounts an American sergeant's meeting with a young girl before being sent into combat in World War II. Originally published in The New Yorker on April 8, 1950, it was anthologized in Salinger's Nine Stories two years later.
"Slight Rebellion off Madison" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the 21 December 1946 issue of The New Yorker.
"Teddy" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, completed on November 22, 1952, and originally published in the January 31, 1953, issue of The New Yorker. Under the influence of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Salinger created an engaging child character, Teddy McArdle, to introduce to his readership some of the basic concepts of Zen enlightenment and Vedanta reincarnation – a task that Salinger recognized would require overcoming some 1950s American cultural chauvinism.
"A Boy in France" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the 31 March 1945 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
"Go See Eddie" is a work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger published in the University Press of Kansas|University of Kansas City Review in December 1940. The story is included in the 2014 Salinger collection Three Early Stories.
"The Hang of It" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, first published in the July 12, 1941 issue of Collier's magazine.
"The Heart of a Broken Story" is a work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger published in the September 1941 issue of Esquire.
"The Long Debut of Lois Taggett" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the September-October 1942 issue of Story.
"Personal Notes of an Infantryman" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the December 12, 1942 issue of Collier's.
"The Varioni Brothers" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the 17 July, 1943 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
"Both Parties Concerned" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the 26 February, 1944 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
"Soft-Boiled Sergeant" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the 15 April 1944 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. The story was illustrated by Graham Kaye..
"Once a Week Won’t Kill You" is a work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger published in the November–December 1944 issue of Story. The story is included in the 2014 Salinger collection Three Early Stories.
"Blue Melody" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the September 1948 issue of Cosmopolitan. The story was inspired by the life of Bessie Smith and was originally titled "Needle on a Scratchy Phonograph Record". Cosmopolitan changed the title to "Blue Melody" without Salinger's consent, a "slick" magazine tactic that was one of the reasons the author decided, in the late forties, that "he wanted to publish only in The New Yorker."
"Elaine" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the March-April, 1945 issue of Story.
"The Inverted Forest" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the December 1947 issue of Cosmopolitan. The work was republished in Cosmopolitan's "Diamond Jubilee" issue in March 1961. The story marked the start of Salinger's focus on the poet as a distinguished creative genius, and on the impossibilities he finds when trying to adapt to society.
"This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise" is an uncollected work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger which appeared in the October 1945 issue of Esquire. The story was published in the 1958 anthology The Armchair Esquire, edited by Arnold Gingrich and L. Rust Hills.
"The Young Folks" is a work of short fiction by J. D. Salinger published in the March–April 1940 issue of Story magazine. The story is included in the 2014 Salinger collection Three Early Stories.
Neither Salinger in his lifetime nor his estate after his death has ever authorized the publication of a volume of Salinger's registered early short fiction which appeared in magazines between 1940 and 1965. Reprints of his early stories have appeared under the auspices of Esquire and The New Yorker, to which Salinger stories had originally been sold.