In the opening page of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden makes it
clear that he hates movies. The remark is prompted not only by
his disappointment that his brother, D. B., a writer whose early
short stories he much admires, has chucked a serious literary life
for the siren call of Hollywood but also because the movies corrupt
those who watch them. Interestingly enough, Ernest Hemingway
had much the same reaction. In a sketch entitled "On Writing"
(included in The Nick Adams Stories [ 1972]), he has Nick Adams,
his fictional mouthpiece, make the following observation: "The
movies ruined everything. Like talking about something good.
That was what had made the war unreal. Too much talking." But
while Hemingway and Salinger are of similar minds about the mov-
ies, it is also clear that they are quite different in personality and
temperament. As a solider in World War II, Salinger presumably
met the world-famous Hemingway during one of the latter's stints
as a war correspondent. By this time Hemingway was a bloated
parody of his former self: the leaner, hungrier writer whose early
stories changed the rhythms of American prose forever. When he
grabbed the celebrity spotlight by shooting the heads off a couple
of chickens, Salinger was appalled.

Nonetheless, the young Salinger is thought to have handed the
older writer a couple of his short stories. To paraphrase the con-
cluding lines of Hemingway The Sun Also Rises ( 1926), it would

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