J.D. Salinger – Author Biography
J.D. Salinger was the American novelist whose 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye became the defining book of teenage alienation — and who then withdrew from public life almost completely, becoming literature’s most famous recluse.
Early Life
Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919, in New York City, the son of a kosher cheese importer. He attended military school at Valley Forge, studied briefly at several colleges, and took a writing class at Columbia University under Whit Burnett, who became his mentor.
Career
Salinger published stories in The New Yorker through the 1940s — interrupted by World War II, in which he served in the U.S. Army, landed at Normandy, and participated in the liberation of a concentration camp, experiences that marked him deeply. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), narrated by the expelled prep-school student Holden Caulfield, was an immediate sensation and has since sold tens of millions of copies, becoming one of the most taught — and most censored — novels in America. He followed with the story collections Nine Stories (1953) and the Glass-family novellas Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published story appeared in 1965. He then stopped publishing entirely, retreating to his home in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he reportedly continued writing for decades without releasing anything.
Major Works
His major works are The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963).
Writing Style and Themes
Salinger wrote in an intimate, colloquial, deceptively artless voice — Holden’s slangy narration remains one of fiction’s great performances. His great themes are innocence versus “phoniness,” the spiritual crisis of gifted young people, Eastern-influenced mysticism (especially in the Glass stories), and the moral corruption of the adult world as seen by the young.
Legacy
The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most influential novels of the twentieth century — the template for every alienated-youth narrative since. Salinger’s withdrawal made him a myth: the genius who said everything he had to say and fell silent. He died on January 27, 2010, in Cornish, New Hampshire.
