J. D. Salinger
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for The Catcher in the Rye, a classic coming-of-age novel that has enjoyed enduring popularity since its publication in 1951. A major theme in Salinger's work is the agile and powerful mind of disturbed young men, and the redemptive capacity of children in the lives of such men.
Salinger is also known for his reclusive nature because he has not given an interview, made a public appearance or published any new work in the last forty years.
Life
Salinger was born in New York City to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother (although he did not find out that his mother wasn't Jewish until he was in his late teens). His father Sol was a meat importer; as a teenager Sonny, as he was known then, went on a trip to Poland to see the family business first-hand. His revulsion led to an estrangement with his father, whom he rarely spoke to as an adult. He attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, upon which Pencey Prep in The Catcher in the Rye is based.
While attending Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, Salinger was called "the worst English student in the history of the College" by one of his professors. Having failed to graduate from several schools, Salinger attended a Columbia University writing class in 1939. The teacher was Whit Burnett, longtime editor of Story Magazine, and during the second semester of the class he saw some degree of talent in the young author. In the March-April 1940 issue of Story Burnett published Salinger's debut short story, a vignette of several aimless youths entitled The Young Folks. Burnett and Salinger would correspond for several years after, although a mix-up involving the proposed publication of a short story collection, also entitled The Young Folks, would leave them estranged.
He served in the Army during World War II, where he saw combat action with the U.S. 4th Infantry Division in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. This perhaps scarred him emotionally (he was hospitalized for combat stress reaction), and it is likely that he drew upon his wartime experiences in several stories, such as For Esmé with Love and Squalor, which is narrated by a traumatized soldier. He continued to publish stories in magazines such as Collier's and the Saturday Evening Post during and after his war experience.
By 1948, with the publication of a critically-acclaimed short story entitled A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Salinger began to publish almost exclusively in the New Yorker, a magazine he greatly admired. "Bananafish" was one of the most popular stories ever published in the magazine, and he quickly became one of their best-known authors. However, it wasn't his first experience with the magazine; in 1942 Salinger had received his first acceptance from the New Yorker. It was for a story entitled "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which featured a semi-autobiographical character named Holden Caulfield. The story, however, was held from publication until 1946 because of the war. The story was related to several others featuring the Caulfield family, but perspective shifted from older brother Vince to Holden.
Salinger had confided to several people that he felt Holden deserved a novel, and The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It was an immediate success, although early critical reactions were mixed. Although never confirmed by Salinger himself, several of the events in the novel are semi-autobiographical. A novel driven by the nuanced, intricate character of Holden, the plot is quite simple. The book became famous for Salinger's extensive and exceptional eye for subtle complexity, detail, and description, for its ironic humor, and for the depressing and desperate atmosphere of New York City. The novel was banned in some countries because of its bold and offensive use of language; "goddam" appears at least every other page. The book is still widely read, particularly in the United States, where it is considered an especially authoritative depiction of teenage angst. It is not unusual to see Catcher in the Rye on a "required reading" list for American high school students.
In 1953 Salinger published a collection of seven short stories published in the New Yorker (Bananafish among them), as well as two that they had rejected. The collection was published as Nine Stories in the United States, and For Esmé -- With Love and Squalor in the UK (after one of the most beloved stories.) It was also very successful, although Salinger had already begun to tightly regulate the publicity allowed the book, and the decoration of the dust jacket.
Salinger later published Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour -- An Introduction which appeared in 1963). Both were compilations of related short stories, originally published in the New Yorker.
Seclusion
After the notoriety of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger gradually withdrew into himself. In 1953 he moved from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire. Early in his time in Cornish he was relatively sociable, particularly with the high school kids who treated him as one of their own. After an interview for the high school newspaper ended up in the city paper instead, he withdrew from them entirely and was seen less frequently around the town as a whole, only seeing his close friend jurist Learned Hand regularly. According to biographer Ian Hamilton this event left Salinger feeling betrayed. His last published work was Hapworth 16, 1924, an epistolary novella that was published in the New Yorker in June, 1965. It's said that, on several occasions in the 1970s, he was on the verge of publishing another work but decided against it at the last minute. In 1978 it was reported in Newsweek that, while attending a banquet in an army friend's honor, he said he had recently finished "a long, romantic book set in World War II", but nothing ever became of it.
Salinger tried to escape public exposure and attention as much as possible ("A writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him", he wrote.) But he constantly struggled with the unwanted attention he got as a cult figure. On learning of British writer Ian Hamilton's intention to publish J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life, a biography including letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends, Salinger sued to stop the book's publication. The book was finally published with the letters' contents paraphrased; the court ruled that though a person may own a letter physically, the language within it belongs to the author.
An unintended result of the lawsuit was that many details of Salinger's private life, including that he had written two novels and many stories but left them unpublished, became public in the form of court transcripts.
He has been a life long student of Advaita Vedanta Hinduism. This has been described at length by Som P. Ranchan in his book An Adventure in Vedanta: J.D. Salinger's the Glass Family (1990). His daughter said in 2000 that he at one time pursued Scientology. [1]
In a surprising move, Salinger gave small publisher Orchises Press permission to publish Hapworth 16, 1924, a previously uncollected novella; it was to be published in 1997, and listings for it appeared on Amazon.com and other book-sellers. However, the date was pushed back a number of times, and its last publication date was set in 2002.
In 2000 his daughter, Margaret Salinger, by his second wife Claire Douglas, published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. In her "tell-all" book, Ms. Salinger stated that her father drank his own urine, spoke in tongues, rarely had sex with her mother, kept her "a virtual prisoner" and refused to allow her to see friends or relatives.
He is the father of actor Matt Salinger, most famous for starring in a direct-to-video version of Captain America.
Salinger himself refuses to allow any of his works to be involved with film; he has not licensed any of his stories or novels since Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut (released as My Foolish Heart), which he reportedly detested.
A year-long affair in 1972 with eighteen-year old aspiring writer Joyce Maynard also became the source of controversy when she put his letters to her up for auction. Software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,000 and announced his intention to return them to Salinger.
In 2002, more than 80 letters from writers, critics and fans to Mr. Salinger were published in the book Letters to J. D. Salinger, edited by Chris Kubica.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger
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