J. D. Salinger
The mid-twentieth century saw American fiction pull sharply inward, trading broad social canvases for the close, anxious examination of individual consciousness. J. D. Salinger, born in New York City on January 1, 1919, became one of the writers who gave that turn its sharpest voice.
Salinger attended PS 6 and the McBurney School before enrolling at Valley Forge Military Academy and College. He later studied at Columbia University and Columbia University's School of General Studies. Working in English, he built his career as a novelist and writer around a small but closely read body of work. His novel The Catcher in the Rye stands as one of his notable works, alongside the short story collection Nine Stories. He also produced Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, the last of which brought together two longer pieces of fiction. Across these four works, he moved between the novel, the short story, and the novella as forms.
Salinger was a citizen of the United States throughout his life. His output as a writer was concentrated, and the works he did publish attracted sustained attention from readers and critics over many decades. The range of forms he worked in — from the single novel to the collected story — gave his relatively compact body of writing an unusual variety.
He died on January 27, 2010, in Cornish. The authorized Library of Congress Name Authority File entry records him as "Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David), 1919–2010," a designation that traces the full arc from his New York City birth to his death in Cornish ninety-one years later.
Quotes by J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger's insights on:
What I like best is a book that's at least funny once in a while. What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
I don't really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it's always nice, I'll grant you, if he has one.
I don't necessarily intend to publish posthumously, but I do like to write for myself.
Some stories, my property, have been stolen. Someone's appropriated them. It's an illicit act. It's unfair. Suppose you had a coat you liked, and somebody went into your closet and stole it. That's how I feel.
There's no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It's all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.
There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.
I'm aware that many of my friends will be saddened and shocked, or shock-saddened, over some of the chapters in 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf, out of their reach.
I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder's mitt. he was left handed. The thing that was descriptive about it though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he'd have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat