Once a Week Won't Kill You

The story concerns a young American soldier who is about to deploy overseas during World War II and his concern for his elderly aunt.[3]

Salinger likely began writing "Once a Week Won't Kill You" while on board the military transport vessel SS George Washington. The ship would dock in Liverpool, England on January 29, 1944.[4] Biographer Kenneth Slawenski notes that the story "was laced with nostalgia for a world that Salinger was already beginning to miss and feared he might never see again."[5]

Editor Whit Burnett accepted the story for publication in October 1944 while Salinger, who spoke German and French, was on the front lines embedded as a counterintelligence officer in the 12th Infantry Regiment or the 4th Infantry Division. Story magazine published the work in November when Salinger’s unit was fighting in the Hürtgen Forest. The editors at Story magazine included a brief autobiographical sketch provided at their request by Salinger.[6]

Literary critic John Wenke describes the story as an exploration "of the ruptures war visits upon individuals and families."[7] Biographer Kenneth Slawenski discerns an ironical element associated with this particular work of short fiction:

While Salinger was enduring Hürtgen, "Once a Week Won’t Kill You" was published…The appearance of this piece, its plot trivial in comparison to his present circumstances, was tinged with irony. It must have been difficult for Salinger to recall the motivation behind the piece or even the persona who had penned it.[8]

Slawenski adds: "Of the original 3,080 regimental soldiers who went into Hürtgen, only 563 were left. For those soldiers especially, walking out of the forest alive was a victory in itself."[9]

• Slawenski, Kenneth. 2010. J. D. Salinger: A Life. Random House, New York. ISBN 978-1-4000-6951-4
• Wenke, John. 1991. J. D. Salinger: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twaynes Studies in Short Fiction, Gordon Weaver, General Editor. Twayne Publishers, New York. ISBN 0-8057-8334-2