J. D. Salinger

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J. D. Salinger

Salinger in the 1950s.
Born: January 1, 1919 (age 88)
Manhattan, New York
Occupation: Novelist and Writer
Influenced: English Classes worldwide

Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) (pronounced [ˈsæ.lən.dʒɚ]) is an American author best known for The Catcher in the Rye, a classic novel that has enjoyed enduring popularity since its publication in 1951. A major theme in Salinger's work is the strong yet delicate mind of "disturbed" adolescents, and the redemptive capacity of children in the lives of such young men. Salinger is also known for his reclusive nature; he has not given an interview since 1980, and has not made a public appearance, nor published any new work (at least under his own name), since 1965. In the mid 1990s, there was a flurry of excitement when a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to bring out the first book version of his final published story, "Hapworth 16, 1924", but amid the ensuing publicity, Salinger quickly withdrew from the arrangement.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, to a Jewish father of Polish origin and a half-Scottish, half-Irish mother. (His mother changed her name to Miriam and passed as Jewish when she married; J. D. did not find out that his mother was not Jewish until just after his bar mitzvah).[1] His father, Solomon, worked for a meat importer. The young Salinger attended public schools on the West Side, the private McBurney School in ninth and tenth grades, and then was happy to get away from the over-protectiveness of his mother by entering the Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania.[2] He started his freshman year at New York University (NYU), but dropped out the next spring to work on a cruise ship. The next fall, he was prevailed upon to learn the meat-importing business and was sent to work at the company in Vienna, where he could also perfect his French and German skills.

He left Austria only a month or so before the country fell to Hitler, on March 12, 1938. That fall, he attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, but for only one semester. Salinger attended Columbia University evening writing class in 1939. The teacher was Whit Burnett, longtime editor of Story Magazine. During the second semester of the class, Burnett 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 thereafter, although a mix-up involving the proposed publication of a short story collection, also entitled The Young Folks, would leave them estranged.

[edit] World War II

In 1941, Salinger started dating Oona O'Neill, daughter of Eugene O'Neill, writing long daily letters to her. This ended when Oona began a relationship with Charlie Chaplin. Salinger was drafted into the Army in 1942, where he saw combat with the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment in some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, including action on Utah Beach on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. During the campaign from Normandy into Germany, he met Ernest Hemingway, then a war correspondent, in Paris. Salinger was assigned to Counter-Intelligence, in which he interrogated prisoners of war, putting his foreign language skills to use. He was among the first soldiers to enter a liberated concentration camp. He told his daughter later, "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live"[3].

His experiences, perhaps, scarred him emotionally (he was hospitalized for a few weeks for combat stress reaction after Germany was defeated), 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. After the defeat of Germany, he signed up for a six-month period of "de-Nazification" duty in Germany. Among those Nazis he arrested was a low-level official, Sylvia, whom he married (from 1945–1956) and brought back to the States. The marriage fell apart after a few months and Sylvia returned to Germany. (In 1972, his daughter Margaret was with her father when he received a letter from Sylvia. He looked at the envelope, tore it up, and discarded it, unread. He said that that was the first time he had heard from her since she left, but "when he was finished with a person, he was through with them.")[4]

[edit] From The New Yorker to novels

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. "Bananafish" was one of the most popular stories ever published in the magazine,[citation needed] and he quickly became one of the publication's best-known authors. It was not his first experience with the magazine; in 1942, Salinger had received his first acceptance from The New Yorker for a story entitled "Slight Rebellion off Madison," which featured a semi-autobiographical character named Holden Caulfield. The story was held from publication until 1946 because of the war. "Slight Rebellion" was related to several other stories 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. While never confirmed by Salinger himself, it is believed that 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, description, ironic humor, and the depressing and desperate atmosphere of New York City. The novel was banned in some countries, and some U.S. schools, because of its bold and (to some) offensive use of language; "goddam" appears 255 times, and a handful of "fuck"s (which the would-be censors seldom notice he was trying to erase from a museum bathroom stall.), plus a few seamy incidents such as the encounter with a prostitute (even though it was a chaste encounter). The book is still widely read, particularly in the United States, where it is considered an especially skillful depiction of teenage angst. It is not unusual to see The Catcher in the Rye on a "required reading" list for American high school students. It still sells about 250,000 copies per year as of 2000.[citation needed]

In July 1951, his friend and New Yorker editor William Maxwell in Book of the Month Club News asked Salinger about his literary influences. Salinger said, “A writer, when he's asked to discuss his craft, ought to get up and call out in a loud voice just the names of the writers he loves. I love Kafka, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Proust, O'Casey, Rilke, Lorca, Keats, Rimbaud, Burns, E. Brontë, Jane Austen, Henry James, Blake, Coleridge. I won't name any living writers. I don't think it's right."[5]

In 1953, Salinger published a collection of seven short stories 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 publicity. He would not allow publishers to illustrate the dust jacket, so that his readers would have no preconceived notion of how the characters looked.

Salinger published Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof-Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction in 1963. Each contained a pair of related short stories or novellas which had been originally published in The New Yorker.

[edit] Encounters with Hollywood

In a 1942 letter to Whit Burnett, Salinger wrote with fervor, "I wanted to sell some stuff to the movies, through the mags. Gotta make a killing, so I can go away to work after the war." After being disappointed, according to Ian Hamilton, when "rumblings from Hollywood" over his 1943 short story "The Varioni Brothers" came to nothing,[6] Salinger was unhesitant when independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn offered to buy the film rights to his 1948 short story, "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Though Salinger sold his story with the hope, in the words of his agent Dorothy Olding, that "they would make a good movie,"[7] the film version of "Wiggly" was critically lambasted upon its 1949 release. Renamed My Foolish Heart and starring Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward, the melodramatic film departed to such an extent from Salinger's short story that Goldwyn biographer A. Scott Berg referred to it as a “bastardization.”[7]

Salinger would never relinquish control of his work to Hollywood filmmakers after that, even though, when The Catcher in the Rye was released in 1951, numerous offers were made to adapt it for the screen (Samuel Goldwyn among them.)[7] Since its publication, there has been sustained interest in the novel among filmmakers, with Billy Wilder,[8] Harvey Weinstein, and Steven Spielberg[9] among those seeking to secure the rights. Actors ranging from Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire have made bids to play Holden Caulfield,[10] and Salinger has said that "Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden."[11] The author has repeatedly demurred, though, and in 1999, the writer Joyce Maynard definitively concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger."[11]

In 1995, Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui made Pari, an unauthorized "loose" film adaptation of Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Though the film could be distributed legally in Iran since the country has no official copyright relations with the United States,[12] Salinger had his lawyers block a planned screening of the film at Lincoln Center in 1998.[13] Mehrjui called Salinger's action "bewildering," explaining that he saw his film as "a kind of cultural exchange."[13]

Despite his issues with film versions of his work, Salinger has been described as a devoted film buff, his favorite films including Gigi, The Lady Vanishes, and The Lost Weekend, along with the films of the Marx Brothers.[14] Predating VCRs, Salinger had an extensive collection of classic movies from the 1940s in 16 mm prints. Maynard wrote that "he loves movies, not films",[11] and his daughter went so far as to write that her father's "worldview is, essentially, a product of the movies of his day. "To my father, all Spanish speakers are Puerto Rican washerwomen, or the toothless, grinning gypsy types in a Marx Brothers movie."[14]

[edit] Withdrawal from public life

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 students who treated him as one of their own. However, after one interview for the high school newspaper ended up in the city paper, Salinger felt betrayed. Salinger withdrew from the high schoolers entirely and was seen less frequently around the town, only seeing one close friend regularly, jurist Learned Hand.

In June 1955, when he was 36, he married Claire Douglas, a Radcliffe student. Their daughter Margaret Salinger was born that December 1955 and their son Matt Salinger was born in 1960. Salinger insisted that Claire drop out of school, only four months shy of graduation, and live with him, which she did. Certain elements of the story "Franny", published in January, 1955, are based on Claire, including the fact that Claire had the book The Way of the Pilgrim[15]. Due to their isolated location and Salinger's proclivities, they hardly saw other people for long stretches of time. Margaret reports that her mother Claire admits living with Salinger was not easy, due to the isolation and his controlling nature; as well as the jealousy of Margaret replacing her (Claire) in Salinger's affection[16]. Margaret was sick much of the time, but Salinger refused to take her to a doctor as he had embraced Christian Science. In later years, Claire confessed to Margaret that she (Claire) went "over the edge;" she had made plans to murder the thirteen-month-old Margaret and then commit suicide. It was to happen during a trip to New York with her husband. "It would be she, Claire, not the fictional Seymour, who'd go bananas and leave guts spattered across the hotel room for the horrified spouse to witness." Instead, Claire, when in the hotel, acted on a sudden impulse to take the child and run away, but after a few months was persuaded by Salinger to return to Cornish, NH.[17]

His last published work was "Hapworth 16, 1924," an epistolary novella in the form of a long letter from seven-year-old Seymour Glass from summer camp, that was published in the New Yorker in June 1965. Salinger's isolation of Claire and his kids from everyone caused Claire to separate from him in September 1966; their divorce was affirmed in October 1967.

It is 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, Newsweek reported that Salinger, while attending a banquet in an army friend's honor, said he had recently finished "a long, romantic book set in World War II," but no further details are known about that book.

[edit] Later years and instances of exposure

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.) However, he continued to struggle with the unwanted attention he received as a popular-culture figure. Dozens of students and readers would drive to Cornish to get a glimpse of Salinger. Some writers would leave manuscripts. In the 1970s and 1980s, the reclusive writer Franz Douskey, who lived near Salinger on Dingleton Hill, would misdirect tourists down a series of dirt roads that led them away from Salinger's house into nearby towns.

On learning of the intent of British writer Ian Hamilton to publish In Search of J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935-65), 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 consequence 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.

In 1972, when Salinger was 53, he had a year-long relationship with 18-year old writer Joyce Maynard, already an experienced writer for Seventeen magazine. The New York Times had asked Maynard to write an article for them which, when published as "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back On Life" on April 23, 1972, made her a celebrity-of-the-moment. Salinger wrote a note to her warning her about living with such fame. They corresponded. Maynard spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's home; the relationship ended, he told his teenaged daughter Margaret at a family outing, because Maynard wanted children, and he felt he could not stand the reality of children again (as opposed to the fantasy children in his writings.)[18] Twenty five years later, controversy ensued when Maynard put Salinger's letters to her up for auction. The sale helped to publicize a memoir of Maynard's, At Home in the World : A Memoir, which, among other indiscretions, described how Maynard's mother had consulted with her on how to appeal to the aging author. Maynard claimed that she was forced to do so for financial reasons; she would have preferred to donate them to Beinecke Library. In 1999, software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,000 and announced his intention to return them to Salinger.[19]

In a surprising move, Salinger gave a small publisher, Orchises Press, permission to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924," the 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, the last time to 2002. It was not published and no new date has been set.

Margaret Salinger's memoir Dream Catcher, its cover featuring a rare photograph of Salinger.
Margaret Salinger's memoir Dream Catcher, its cover featuring a rare photograph of Salinger.

In 2000, Salinger's daughter Margaret Salinger, by his second wife, Claire Douglas, published Dream Catcher: A Memoir. In her "tell-all" book, Ms. Salinger dispelled many of the Salinger myths established by Ian Hamilton's book. Foremost among these challenges is that Salinger's experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder somehow means that he is a psychologically scarred individual who cannot deal with the traumatic nature of his war service. Ms. Salinger paints a picture of J. D. as a man immensely proud of his service record, maintaining his military haircut, service jacket, and moving about his compound (and town) in an old Jeep. Ms. Salinger offered many insights into the Salinger myths, including her father's supposed long-time interest in macrobiotics and involvement with what is today known as "alternative medicine" and Eastern philosophies.

Salinger had been a follower of Zen Buddhism, and had met the scholar D. T. Suzuki. Then he became 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). Sri Ramakrishna and his student Vivekananda were important contemporary figures he studied. In this tradition, celibacy and detachment from human responsibilities such as family are emphasized for those seeking enlightenment. Margaret Salinger says that she might have never been born if her father had not read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda who brought the possibility of enlightenment to those following the path of the "householder" (i.e., married person with children). J. D. and Claire were initiated into this path of Kriya yoga in a small store-front Hindu temple in a lower-middle class neighborhood of Washington, DC. They received a mantra and breathing exercises that they were to practice for ten minutes twice a day. Salinger had sudden jumps of enthusiasm for different belief-systems that he then insisted Claire also follow. Salinger tried Dianetics (later called Scientology), even meeting L. Ron Hubbard himself, according to Claire.[20][21] This was followed by a number of spiritual/medical/nutritional belief systems including Christian Science, teachings of Edgar Cayce, homeopathy, acupuncture, macrobiotics, fasting, megadoses of Vitamin C, vomiting to remove impurities, solar reflectors for tanning, drinking one's own urine (this is part of the folk-medicine of several cultures around the world; see urine therapy), "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia) which he learned at a Charismatic church, and sitting in a Reichian "orgone box" to accumulate "orgone energy."

Ms. Salinger writes that J. D. rarely had sex with his wife, kept her "a virtual prisoner," refused to allow her to see friends or relatives, insisted on extensive meals and other house-work like laundered and ironed sheets in their poorly equipped rural house.[20]

Salinger's third wife is Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker. She is 40 years younger than her husband. Colleen told Margaret that she and Salinger were trying to have a child. [22]

[edit] Works

[edit] Published and collected

  • The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors and Marines (1943)
  • Best American Short Stories 1949. Ed: Martha Foley (1949)
    • "A Girl I Knew" (1948)
  • The Armchair Esquire. Ed: L. Rust Hills (1959)
    • "This Sandwich Has no Mayonnaise" (1945) Vincent (D.B.) Caulfield
  • Fiction: Form & Experience. Ed: William M. Jones (1969)

[edit] Published and uncollected

See [1]

[edit] Unpublished and uncollected

[edit] At Princeton Library

See [4] [5]

[edit] Trivia

  • Kurt Cobain, of Nirvana, was seen carrying The Catcher In The Rye just days prior to his death. It is said to have been his favorite book.
  • Students at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., have exchanged stories of sighting Salinger in and around the College's Baker Memorial Library for decades
  • The long awaited Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy, to be released in 2007, contains a track titled "Catcher in the Rye."
  • American band Green Day wrote a song titled "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?" in reference to The Catcher in the Rye. It is part of the album Kerplunk
  • Salinger is also the father of actor Matt Salinger, Margaret's brother, most famous for starring in a direct-to-video version of Captain America.
  • In a 2006 check in between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert jokingly claimed he was interviewing Salinger. Jon Stewart playfully said, "Why must you lie?" and Colbert responded, "If you really want to know about it…" alluding to the opening lines of The Catcher in the Rye. Colbert ended with "Raise High the Roofbeam, Jon-o!"
  • At the end of another episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert jokingly apologized to Salinger and Nelson Mandela for not having time to interview them during the show, which featured appearances by Henry Kissinger, Peter Frampton and N.Y. governor-elect Eliot Spitzer.
  • The novel Shoeless Joe, by author W. P. Kinsella, features the protagonist seeking out J. D. Salinger. When this book was adapted into film as Field of Dreams, the character was changed to a fictional author, "Terence Mann" (played by James Earl Jones).
  • The novel The Catcher in the Rye was carried by Mark David Chapman at the time he assassinated John Lennon on December 8, 1980. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, was reported to be obsessed with the novel.
  • In 2002, 80 letters from writers, critics and fans to Mr. Salinger were published in the book Letters to J. D. Salinger, edited by Chris Kubica.
  • Salinger has continued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning. Salinger has several floor-to-ceiling safes containing manuscripts, marked with notations such as "to be published as-is", "to be edited", etc., in case of his death.[23]
  • Salinger has three cats, named Kitty 1, Kitty 2, and Kitty 3.[24]
  • Salinger is mentioned in the Streetlight Manifesto and Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution song "Here's to Life."
Hey there Salinger, What did you do?
Just when the world was looking at you
To write anything, that meant anything
You told us you were through
And it's been years since you passed away
but I see no plaque, and I see no grave.
And I can't help believing, you wanted it that way."
  • Screenwriter Mike Rich mentions Salinger as an inspiration for the story of Finding Forrester, which features a reclusive author as one of the main characters.
  • The song "If You Really Want To Hear About It…" by The Ataris references the first lines of The Catcher In The Rye.
  • Author Jacques Poulin credits Salinger's "unreliable" first-person narrative in The Catcher In The Rye with inspiring him to use the technique in his 1969 novel Jimmy.
  • In the Belle & Sebastian song 'Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie', Stuart Murdoch sings the lines "Wouldn't you like to get away? Give yourself up to the allure of Catcher In The Rye."
  • The anime cartoon Ghost in the Shell, featured many Salinger motifs, most notably the Laughing Man.

[edit] References

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 20.
  2. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 31.
  3. ^ Salinger, M (2000) Dream Catcher, p. 55.
  4. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 359.
  5. ^ Al Silverman, ed., The Book of the Month: Sixty Years of Books in American Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986), pp. 129–130.
  6. ^ Hamilton, Ian. In Search of J. D. Salinger. New York: Random House, 1988.
  7. ^ a b c Berg, A. Scott. Goldwyn: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
  8. ^ Crowe, Cameron, ed. Conversations with Wilder. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
  9. ^ PAGE SIX; Inside Salinger's Own World. The New York Post. (2003-12-04). Retrieved on January 18, 2007.
  10. ^ News & Features. IFILM: The Internet Movie Guide (2004). Archived from the original on 2004-09-06. Retrieved on April 5, 2007.
  11. ^ a b c Maynard, Joyce. At Home in the World: A Memoir. New York: Picador USA, 1998. 93.
  12. ^ Circular 38a of the U.S. Copyright Office
  13. ^ a b Mckinley, Jesse. "Iranian Film Is Canceled After Protest By Salinger" (fee required), The New York Times, 1998-11-21. Retrieved on April 5, 2007.
  14. ^ a b Salinger, Margaret A. Dream Catcher: a memoir. New York: Washington Square, 2000.
  15. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 84.
  16. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 115.
  17. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 116.
  18. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 362.
  19. ^ http://www.cnn.com/books/news/9906/22/salinger.letters/
  20. ^ a b Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 94.
  21. ^ Smith, Dinitia (2000-8-30). Salinger's Daughter's Truths as Mesmerizing as His Fiction. The New York Times. Retrieved on March 9, 2007.
  22. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 108.
  23. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 307.
  24. ^ Salinger, M (2000). Dream Catcher, p. 107.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Persondata
NAME Salinger, J. D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Salinger, Jerome David
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Manhattan, New York
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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