J. D.

Salinger
American Decades, 2003
Born: 1919 in New York, New York, United States
Died: January 27, 2010 in United States, New Hampshire, Cornish
Nationality: American
Occupation: Novelist
Prep School Student. J. D. (Jerome David) Salinger was born on 1 January 1919 in New York City. He was the
second of two children born to Solomon Salinger (a successful Jewish cheese merchant) and his wife Miriam
(who was Scottish-born and, according to a widespread rumor, had changed her name from Marie to be
accepted by Solomon's family). Salinger had a great deal of difficulty getting along in both public and prep
schools and, as a last resort, his father enrolled him in the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. Valley
Forge later became the model for the fictional Pensey Prep in his classic work The Catcher in the Rye, although
Salinger was a far less troubled student than his character Holden Caulfield. Before graduating from Valley
Forge in 1936, Salinger wrote the lyrics to the school anthem, a creation that gave little hint of his literary
promise: "...The lights are dimmed, the bugle sounds, The notes we'll ne'er forget. And now a group of smiling
lads: We part with much regret."
Early Career. After leaving Valley Forge, Salinger briefly attended New York University, but dropped out to
become an entertainer on a cruise ship. He then went to Europe with his father to learn the family cheese
business, but returned as war threatened and again briefly attended college, first at Ursinus College in
Pennsylvania and then Columbia University in New York. Whit Burnett, editor of Story magazine and Salinger's
instructor at Columbia, published Salinger's "The Young Folks" in 1939, the first of many short stories Salinger
would have published during the next few years.
Served in World War II. Salinger entered the U.S. Army shortly after World War II began, and eventually was
sent to Europe where he participated in the liberation of France and used his language skills to interrogate
German prisoners. One biographer, Ian Hamilton, claims that Salinger was so upset by what he witnessed of the
war that he had to be hospitalized. While serving in Europe, Salinger also continued to write short stories,
several of which were published in popular magazines such as Esquire and The Saturday Evening Post.
(Salinger later refused to have any of these stories republished, and was outraged when they appeared in a
two-volume set in 1974 without his permission. He enlisted both a lawyer and the FBI to retrieve as many
volumes as possible, even though the stories were still readily accessible to anyone who looked at the original
magazines.) After the war ended and Salinger returned to New York, he began to establish a reputation as a
short story writer. His story "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," which later was revised and included in The Catcher
in the Rye, was the first of numerous Salinger stories to be published in The New Yorker in the 1940s and
1950s.
Divorced Twice. Salinger stayed in Europe briefly after World War II ended, and while there he married a
Frenchwoman, whose first name was Sylvia but about whom little else is known. The marriage ended in divorce
soon after Salinger returned to the United States in 1946. In 1955, at the age of 36, he married Claire Douglas,
who was a 19-year-old student when they met and later became a Jungian analyst. That marriage produced two
children and ended in divorce in 1967, shortly after Salinger withdrew completely to their New Hampshire farm,
stopped publishing, and cut off most public contact.
The Glass Family. In 1948, Salinger's first story featuring characters from the Glass family, "A Perfect Day for
Bananafish," was published. All of Salinger's published work from that point on would include stories focusing on

the Glasses, an upper-class American family whose children, like Holden Caulfield, are innocent idealists adrift in
a corrupt world. The stories also exhibit Salinger's growing interest in Eastern religions, particularly Zen
Buddhism, and read as a whole can be seen as a quest for spiritual enlightenment. The cornerstone of the Glass
family is Seymour, a brother who actually appears only in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." In this story Seymour,
after spending a day walking on a beach and talking with a young girl, returns to his hotel room, lies down next to
his napping wife, and unexpectedly shoots himself. "Bananafish" is generally considered to be one of Salinger's
best-written and best-known short stories.
Wrote His Masterpiece. In 1951 what became Salinger's most famousand, in some circles, most
notoriouswork was published. The Catcher in the Rye is a novel that tells about a few days in the life of Holden
Caulfield, a prep school student who is about to flunk out of school and decides to visit his young sister Phoebe
before he heads west to live in a log cabin. Holden is a lonely idealist whose brother has died and who is deeply
upset by the "phony" adult world. Along the way to visiting his sister, Holden himself takes on a number of phony
roles to fool people he encounters. Eventually he envisions himself as a figure who will save innocent children
from the dangers of the world, calling himself the "catcher in the rye" who keeps children from falling off cliffs (in
a slight misquotation of a Robert Burns poem).
Book Sparked Controversy. The Catcher in the Rye became increasingly well-known through the 1950s and
1960s for two reasons. First, it was one of the first and best-written "coming of age" stories to be published after
World War II. The novel became extremely popular with the group that later would be called the "Baby Boomer"
generation, due to its idealistic hero who was adrift in a corrupt world and decided to drop out of it. It also
became the target of numerous censorship campaigns, because of Holden's language (authentic for an
adolescent boy, but scandalous for the time) and its scathing criticism of society. As a result, for decades The
Catcher in the Rye topped many conservative groups' lists of books that should be banned from public schools
and libraries. By the late 1990s, however, The Catcher in the Rye was no longer considered as objectionable,
when compared to other books with even more explicit language and more controversial social topics. An
American Library Association survey published in 1996 found that the novel was accessible in almost 99% of the
libraries that the group had surveyed nationwide.
Other Stories. Nine Stories, a collection of Salinger stories that largely had been published previously in
magazines, was published in 1953. Highlights of Nine Stories included "Bananafish" and another famous
Salinger story, "For EsmeWith Love and Squalor," in which an American soldier and writer (not part of the
Glass family) recovers from a nervous breakdown after receiving a letter from a young English girl he had met
during the war. In 1961's Franny and Zooey (a reprint of two previously-published long stories), the youngest
Glass daughter Franny is torn between a relationship with an insensitive clod of a boyfriend and her hope for a
pure, spiritual love experience. Zooey, her older brother, spends much of his half of the book trying to save
Franny from the breakdown that finally overtakes her by discussing the nature of religious experience. "Raise
High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour: An Introduction," two more previously-published stories
collected in one volume in 1963, are narrated by Seymour's younger brother Buddy. "Raise High the Roof Beam,
Carpenters" tells the story of Seymour's wedding, from which the groom is conspicuously absent, having eloped
with his fiancee. The story describes the reactions of guests at the event, and Buddy's realization that Seymour's
seemingly rude act is actually a sign of his spiritual sensitivity. "Seymour: An Introduction" continues Buddy's
exploration of Seymour as a spiritual model. Salinger's last published story appeared in The New Yorker in 1965:
"Hapsworth 16, 1924," a letter in which seven-year-old Seymour describes summer camp to his five-year-old
brother Buddy. The letter, recently rediscovered by 46-year-old Buddy, marked a farewell both to the Glass
family and to Salinger's published writings and public appearances.
Chastised By Critics. Many of Salinger's early short stories were well-received by critics, as outstanding
examples of what came to be known as post-modernist literature following World War II and as fascinating

character studies. However, as Salinger continued to write about the Glass family to the exclusion of all other
themes, critics began to tire of their endlessly unresolved spiritual and emotional struggles. Biographer Hamilton
collected examples of scathing published comments by prestigious critics: John Updike saying that "Salinger
loves the Glasses more than God loves them;" Leslie Fiedler noting that "Salinger of course speaks for the
cleanest, politest, best-dressed, best-fed and best-read among the disaffected;" and, perhaps most cutting of all,
Mary McCarthy concluding that "Salinger's world contains nothing but Salinger." However, many readers still
enjoy the saga of the Glasses and continue to be drawn into the stories, so much so that numerous people claim
to have actually met members of the family!
Reclusive Life. Salinger's long-time literary agent, Dorothy Olding (who represented Salinger until she had a
stroke in 1990, and died in 1997 without ever disclosing secrets about her reclusive client), guarded his privacy
zealously. She did reveal that, at Salinger's request, she had never forwarded any fan mail to him, and she had
destroyed their personal correspondence in 1970. Requests for interviews and proposals from publishers
likewise were routinely rejected even before Salinger moved to New Hampshire permanently in the mid-1960s.
One of the few interviews he did give, and the last, was in 1953 to a New Hampshire high school student he had
befriended, perhaps considering her one of his favored innocent children. Rather than appearing on the local
newspaper's high school page, the interview was marketed as a news scoop. Salinger promptly built a tall fence
surrounding his property and, when he married Claire Douglas shortly afterward, he began to withdraw from
contact even with the neighbors who had been his friends.
Moved to New Hampshire. Shortly after the publication of "Hapsworth 16, 1924" in 1965, and faced with
increasingly nasty reviews by critics, Salinger (in his late 40s, like his character Buddy Glass in "Hapsworth"), left
New York City. And, like another famous character, Holden Caulfield, Salinger set out for a symbolic log cabin far
from "phony" society, taking up permanent residence on his farm in Cornish, New Hampshire. He and his wife
Claire divorced in 1967, and she raised their son and daughter in New Hampshire and Vermont. Since his retreat
to the farm, there have been only rare public sightings of Salinger. He announced his intention never to publish
again, and returned an advance he had received from his publisher after the publication of Franny and Zooey.
Sued Biographer. In the mid-1980s Salinger resurfaced briefly to block publication of a planned biography of
him by Ian Hamilton. When Hamilton first let Salinger know that he was planning to write a biography, Salinger
strongly urged him not to do so. In the course of researching the biography without the reclusive author's
assistance, Hamilton located correspondence between Salinger and assorted editors and friends, including his
mentor Whit Burnett. Some of the letters, which had been written between 1939 and 1961, were publicly
accessible in the manuscript collections of Princeton University and the University of Texas. Others were
obtained from Hamish Hamilton Publishers in London and from the biographer of the late Judge Learned Hand,
who had been a friend of Salinger. The letters were liberally quoted in Hamilton's draft, and the infuriated
Salingerunaware that the letters still existedfiled a lawsuit demanding that publication of all material from the
letters be prevented. He claimed that Hamilton had invaded his privacy and infringed a copyright on the letters.
In a landmark 1987 decision that affected all subsequent writers of biographies, the U.S. Court of Appeals in
New York decided that such letters still belonged to their writer, even if they were in library collections, and could
not be used without his permission. The U.S. Supreme Court let this decision stand without comment on appeal,
despite fervent arguments that it was an unfair restriction of journalists' free speech. Hamilton was forced to
rewrite the book twice before the finished product, In Search of J.D. Salinger, was finally published in 1988.
Made Rare Public Appearance. Ironically, by filing this lawsuit to protect his privacy, Salinger was forced to
make one of his few public appearances in years. He had to travel to the New York office of attorneys for
Random House, which planned to publish Hamilton's biography, where he sat through an eight-hour deposition

interview. Even more ironic, during the lawsuit all of the letters that Hamilton had sought to use in the biography
were put on file in the copyright office in New York, where anyone paying a small fee could view them, since the
copyright filing was a public document.
A "New" Story At Last? During the decades that Salinger has lived in seclusion on his New Hampshire farm,
there have been many rumors that he is working on new stories in the writing shed next to his home, but none
has ever materialized. In early 1997, Salinger's agent announced that Orchises Press, a minor Virginia publisher,
was going to publish a book by Salinger. After the excitement settled a bit, it was revealed that the book actually
was going to be a reprint of Salinger's last published story, "Hapsworth 16, 1924," which had appeared in The
New Yorker in 1965. The usual mystery surrounding the author, then 78 years-old, grew daily: His agent would
not return calls from reporters, and no one could give a definite date of publication. This final installment of the
Glass family saga, a letter from summer camp written by seven-year-old Seymour to his younger brother Buddy,
had not been well-received by critics at its original publication. Based on at least one writer's response to the
news that the long-awaited "new" Salinger work was actually this recycled 32-year-old story, Salinger might have
expected a less than enthusiastic critical response. New York Times writer Michiko Kakutani dismissed
"Hapsworth" as "a nearly interminable letter," and regretted that the "infinitely engaging author of The Catcher in
the Rye" had produced and chosen to republish "a sour, implausible and, sad to say, completely charmless
story."
J. D. Salinger
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1994-2001 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale, Cengage Learning.

Source Citation:
"J. D. Salinger." American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Detroit: Gale, 2003.
Gale Biography In Context. Web. 11 Oct. 2010.
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