SOURCE CITATION
"J(erome) D(avid) Salinger." Major Authors and Illustrators for Children and Young Adults, 2nd ed., 8 vols. Gale Group, 2002. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
With the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, J. D. Salinger not only defined a generation, but also gave young adults a character in whom they could see themselves--Holden Caulfield, "the innocent child in the evil and hostile universe, the child who can never grow up," wrote Maxwell Geismar in his American Moderns: From Rebellion to Conformity. Both a classic and an object of debate, the book made Salinger a literary phenomenon while selling more than ten million copies.

Although his reputation and readership were unmatched by any other living writer of the time, he retreated to a primitive country house in Cornish, New Hampshire, only a few years after the appearance of his novel; he signed no autographs and refused to give lectures or interviews. "No one else has ever been known in quite the way that Salinger has--first as the creator of a voice and a consciousness in which a vast number of very different readers have recognized themselves, second as an elusive figure uneasy with his audience and distrustful of his public, and finally as a kind of living ghost, fiercely protective of his isolation," asserted Philip Stevick in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. A fence was eventually built around Salinger's house, and a Newsweek contributor explained that the only way to reach the residence is by way of a dog-patrolled fifty-foot cement tunnel from the garage. In his J. D. Salinger, Warren French quoted Salinger as having said: "I feel tremendously relieved that the season for success for The Catcher in the Rye is nearly over. I enjoyed a small part of it, but most of it I found hectic and professionally and personally demoralizing." Since 1965 Salinger has published nothing, but his voice continues to speak to countless readers of all ages.

Very little is known about Salinger's childhood. His father was a Jewish importer of hams and cheeses, his mother a Scottish-Irish gentile. Stevick maintains that the family's address indicates they led a prosperous life. Salinger attended several New York public schools before being enrolled in his first private school. In 1934, Salinger entered Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, graduating two years later. Soon after, he briefly attended New York University and traveled in Europe. During this time, added Stevick, Salinger was constantly writing and sending his stories to numerous magazines, and he was first published in Story in 1940. Twenty-three stories appeared in "middle-range" magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Mademoiselle, Good Housekeeping, and Collier's, and were pirated for an unauthorized collection in 1974. "Salinger has disavowed those early stories and, on one occasion," observed Stevick, "took legal steps to enjoin their unauthorized publication."

Salinger's work first appeared in the New Yorker in 1946, and by 1948 he was publishing almost exclusively for this magazine. "He soon became 'a New Yorker writer' and a friend of its major editorial figures," observed Stevick, adding that Salinger "was honored by his presence in its elegant pages and by its high standards for fiction." The stories included in Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters; and, Seymour: An Introduction first appeared in the New Yorker, and all exhibit a similarity of character. "Salinger discovered a focus that was to continue through a large portion of his fiction, namely the use of childhood, adolescence, or youth as both an object of interest in itself and as a thematic lever by means of which the nature of the wider world could be pried open," maintained Stevick, adding: "Sensitive and perceptive, Salinger's younger characters are unable to prevail against the hypocrisy around them. Or, authentic and bright on the one hand, fatally naive on the other, they conspire in their own failures."

The Catcher in the Rye continues this focus through the character of Holden Caulfield. The novel opens with Holden in a psychiatric hospital, recovering from some sort of breakdown. It is written in the first person and describes the two days Holden spent in New York after being expelled from his third prep school. Holden's age dictates the type of language used in the novel, so all the slang and four-letter words used by adolescents are included. The novel has experienced a controversial history, focusing primarily on this raw language. French pointed out that the book was temporarily banned in both South Africa and Australia because it was thought to be immoral. And in 1956, added French, the National Organization for Decent Literature in Nevada found the novel to be "objectional." It was also banned from an eleventh-grade English class in Oklahoma in 1961, and, in 1970, it was prohibited in one Carolina county for its obscenity. Many small-town libraries even kept their copy of The Catcher in the Rye on a restricted shelf after it had become a part of many high school and college courses. "There is probably not one phrase in the whole book that Holden Caulfield would not have used upon occasion, but when they are piled upon each other in cumulative monotony, the ear refuses to believe," explained Virgilia Peterson in the New York Herald-Tribune Book Review. Edward P. J. Corbett, though, argued in America that "Holden's swearing is so habitual, so unintentional, so ritualistic that it takes on a quality of innocence." Corbett also contended that "all of the scenes about sexual matters are tastefully, even beautifully, treated." Holden has fundamentally sound values, concluded Corbett, adding that "future controversy will probably center on just what age an adolescent must be before he is ready for this book."

Salinger is reported to have said he regretted that The Catcher in the Rye "might be kept out of the reach of children," stated Peter J. Seng in College English. "It is hard to guess at the motives behind his remark," continued Seng, "but one of them may have been that he was trying to tell young people how difficult it was to move from their world into the world of adults. He may have been trying to warn them against the pitfalls of the transition." Throughout the novel, Holden is trying to deal with just such a transition and is presented as "the fumbling adolescent nauseated by the grossness of the world's body," asserted James E. Miller, Jr. in his J. D. Salinger. "Phoniness" is the word that Holden uses to describe almost everything in the world around him, said Seng, and he wants to protect children from all of these evils. But, as his sister Phoebe points out, Holden does not "like" anything--he is unwilling to compromise and this is why he is telling his story from a psychiatric hospital. "Holden will survive," continued Seng, "but first he must learn to love other human beings as well as he loves children. He must acquire a sense of proportion, a sense of humor. He must learn compassion for the human, the pompous, the phoney, the perverse; such people are the fellow inhabitants of his world, and behind their pitiful masks are the faces of the children in the rye."

The problems presented in The Catcher in the Rye seem to have universal relevance. "For many young adults it is the most honest and human story they know about someone they

recognize--even in themselves--a young man caught between childhood and maturity and unsure which way to go," pointed out Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen in Literature for Today's Young Adults. "There is no question that Salinger's book captured--and continues to capture--the hearts and minds of countless young adults as no other book has," concluded Donelson and Nilsen. "I have no idea why Salinger has not in recent years graced us with more stories," stated New Republic contributor Robert Coles. "It is no one's business, really. He has already given us enough," continued Coles, "maybe too much: we so far have not shown ourselves able to absorb and use the wisdom he has offered us."

UPDATES
June 12, 2005: Salinger's story "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters" was adapted as a dance performance by the Silver-Brown Dance Company. "Raise High" premiered on June 12 at the 92nd St. Y in New York. Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, June 14, 2005.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born January 1, 1919, in New York, NY; son of Sol (an importer) and Miriam (Jillich) Salinger; allegedly married Sylvia (a French physician), September, 1945 (divorced, 1947); married Claire Douglas, February 17, 1955 (divorced, October, 1967); married Colleen (a nurse); children: (second marriage) Margaret Ann, Matthew. Education: Graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy, 1936; attended New York University, Ursinus College, and Columbia University (where he studied with Whit Burnett). Addresses: Homeoff--Cornish, NH. Agent--Harold Ober Associates, Inc., 425 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10017.

CAREER
Writer. Worked as an entertainer on the Swedish liner M.S. Kungsholm in the Caribbean, 1941. Military service: U.S. Army, 1942-46; served in Europe; became staff sergeant; received five battle stars.