Personal Background
Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger, whose nickname as a child was “Sonny,” was born on New Year’s Day 1919, in New York, New York, the second and last child of Sol and Marie (Miriam) Jillich Salinger. He had a sister, Doris, eight years older. Salinger’s father, a successful importer of meats and cheeses, was Jewish, his mother Scotch-Irish. Like most of Salinger’s central characters, the family lived in the relative comfort of the upper-middle class.
Education
Young Salinger’s early ambition was in dramatics; he was voted “most popular actor” at Camp Wigwam in Harrison, Maine, in the summer of 1930. An average student in public school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he was reported to be a quiet, polite, somewhat solitary child. His parents enrolled him in McBurney School in Manhattan in 1932, but he did not adjust well to the private school and struggled with grades. Concerned about their son’s academic performance, his parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania when he was 15 years old. There, he was active in drama and singing clubs. He sometimes wrote fiction by flashlight under his blankets at night and contributed to the school’s literary magazine. As editor of the academy’s yearbook, Crossed Sabres, he published a poem in it that became the lyrics to the school’s anthem. He graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in June of 1936.
Salinger’s collegiate experience was brief but significant. He attended New York University following prep school but withdrew to try performing as an entertainer on a Caribbean cruise ship. His father tried, in vain, to interest Salinger in the import business during a trip to Europe in 1937. Returning to school at Ursinus College in Collegetown, Pennsylvania, in 1938, Salinger wrote a column of humor, satire, and film reviews, called “Skipped Diploma,” for the college newspaper.
At the age of 20, in 1939, Salinger enrolled in a short-story writing course at Columbia University taught by Whit Burnett, a writer and important editor; Salinger sold his first story to Burnett’s Story magazine for twenty-five dollars the next year. Salinger published a grateful tribute to Burnett in Fiction Writers’ Hand-book in 1975.
Early Work
Despite receiving a number of rejection slips, Salinger continued to write and submit stories. He sold his first Holden Caulfield story (eventually revised and titled “Slight Rebellion Off Madison”) to the prestigious New Yorker magazine in 1941, but it was not published until 1946.
During the war, Salinger served as an enlisted man, reaching the rank of sergeant, and continued writing. He received counterintelligence training and landed on Utah Beach, Normandy, on D-day (June 6, 1944). Sergeant Salinger participated in five campaigns in Europe, witnessing some of the heaviest fighting in the war. He carried a portable typewriter in his jeep, serving his apprenticeship through commercially successful (if mostly forgettable) stories published in popular magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post, and Esquire. “I’m Crazy,” appearing in Collier’s magazine in 1945, included material later used in The Catcher in the Rye. But for the most part, Salinger tried to dissuade any republishing of these works. As he said in a rare interview with the New York Times in 1974, he preferred that such inferior efforts “die a perfectly natural death.” A two-volume pirated edition of uncollected pieces did appear in 1974 despite the best efforts of Salinger and his attorney.
In 1946, a ninety-page novella (a short novel) about Holden Caulfield was nearly published, but Salinger withdrew from the agreement. Another five years passed before he introduced the classic in novel form.
In September of 1945, while still in Europe immediately following the war, Salinger apparently married a French professional, perhaps a physician, named Sylvia (whose maiden name is unknown). A divorce was granted in 1947. He married Claire Douglas on February 17, 1955. The couple had a daughter, Margaret Ann, and a son, Matthew, but divorced in 1967.
Career Highlights
Salinger published seven stories in the New Yorker between 1946 and 1951, developing a first rejection rights association (meaning the magazine had the first chance at publishing, or rejecting, his work) with the premiere magazine for serious writers. In 1948, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” introduced Seymour Glass, perhaps the core character of the Glass stories and a figure whom some consider to be nearly as important as Holden in Salinger’s work. Esteemed Salinger critic Warren French considers the story to be one of the more significant in American fiction World War II.
The Success of The Catcher in the Rye
After a gestation period of ten years, The Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16, 1951, changing American fiction and J.D. Salinger’s life. As French points out, Salinger was “unprepared for the kind of cult success” brought by the novel. The author progressively became one of the most famous of literary recluses, moving to Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1953 and rarely granting interviews or making public appearances. He found fame abhorrent and literary criticism distasteful.
When Ian Hamilton attempted an unauthorized biography of J.D. Salinger in the 1980s, Salinger successfully protested the use of letters that he had written to friends and editors between 1939 and 1961. He claimed infringement of copyright and invasion of privacy even though the letters had been donated to libraries and were available for study. A Federal Appeals Court denied use of even short quotations or paraphrases from the letters. Salinger was granted legal injunctions against publication of Hamilton’s book; these were upheld when the United States Supreme Court refused to review the verdicts of two lower federal courts that held in favor of Salinger. The decision was considered extraordinary. According to David Margolic, legal affairs writer for the New York Times, this was “the first time in American memory that a book had been enjoined prior to publication, and it sent shock waves throughout the academic and publishing communities” (November 1, 1987).
Short Stories
For a time, Salinger continued to publish. His short story “Franny” appeared in the January 29, 1955, issue of the New Yorker. Franny is the youngest of the Glass daughters. She is confused by her desire for a spiritual relationship and her physical, sexual involvement with a crude boyfriend. The May 4, 1957, New Yorker carried a companion piece, “Zooey,” in which Franny’s older brother guides her while discovering his own spiritual awareness. “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” (1955) is Buddy Glass’s recollection of Seymour’s scheduled wedding and the reactions of the guests when the groom failed to attend. “Seymour: An Introduction” (1959) offers Buddy’s attempt to explain Seymour to the general reader.
“Hapworth 16, 1924” (in the New Yorker on June 19, 1965) was Salinger’s last publication for many years. In early 1997, however, Salinger’s representatives announced that Orchises Press in Alexandria, Virginia, would publish this novella in book form. The story consists of a long letter from Seymour Glass to his family, concerning his experiences at summer camp at the age of seven.
In 1998, Joyce Maynard published a memoir (At Home in the World) recalling her 1972 affair, at the age of 18, with J.D. Salinger. Along with numerous bizarre details, she reports that the author had two completed, unpublished novels kept in a vault.
Published Works
In addition to The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Salinger has published, in book form, a well-received collection, Nine Stories (1953); Franny and Zooey (1961) as companion pieces; and two related Glass stories, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). An unauthorized edition, The Complete Uncollected Short Stories of J.D. Salinger, appeared in two volumes between 1967 and 1974.
In 1950, Samuel Goldwyn Studio released a motion picture, My Foolish Heart, based on “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” (published in the New Yorker in 1948). Although the film received generally favorable reviews, Salinger reportedly was so upset by the distortion of his theme that he vowed never to allow Hollywood to get hold of another piece of his work.
