J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger (born January 1, 1919) is an American author best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature; he has not published any new work since 1965 and has not granted a formal interview since 1980.

Raised in Manhattan, New York, Salinger attended several boarding schools, where he began writing short stories. He attended college briefly but dropped out to devote his time to writing, publishing his first short story in 1940. After serving with the U.S. 12th Infantry Regiment and working as a Counter-Intelligence officer in World War II, Salinger returned to New York. In 1948, he published a short story called "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in the esteemed The New Yorker magazine. The story inspired the magazine to sign Salinger to a contract allowing them right of first refusal on all future stories, and by the early fifties, Salinger was publishing his work almost exclusively in The New Yorker.

In 1951, he published his first and, to date, only, novel, The Catcher in the Rye. The semi-autobiographical novel received polarized response; though reviews were mixed and it was banned in several countries and some U.S. schools due to its language and content, the book was an immediate popular success. Salinger’s depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the character of protagonist Holden Caulfield was incredibly influential, especially among adolescents; in 1961, Time magazine wrote that "Salinger....has spoken with more magic, particularly to the young, than any other U.S. writer since World War II." The novel remains widely-read, selling about 250,000 copies a year as of 2004.

The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to increased public scrutiny and Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed up Catcher with three collections of short stories, Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published piece of writing, a novella titled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

In the intervening years, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the mid-eighties with Ian Hamilton, a biographer who attempted to excerpt pieces of Salinger’s letters, and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two former confidantes: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover, and Margaret Salinger, his estranged daughter. In the infrequent interviews he has granted, Salinger confirmed that he continues to write, and has completed at least two novels. In 1997, there was a flurry of excitement when a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, Salinger withdrew from the arrangement.