J. D. Salinger

Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David)

(1919–  ) writer; born in New York City. He graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy (1936) and studied at New York University, Ursinus College, and Columbia University. He began to write when young, worked as an entertainer on a cruise ship (1941), served in the Army (1942–46), and began to publish short stories. The Catcher in the Rye (1951), his first and only novel, was an immediate success, generating a cult-like dedication among many readers. His subsequent collections of short stories, many of which first appeared in the New Yorker, such as Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), raised more speculation about the elusive author. Critics have been puzzled by his work—he is considered to be either too intellectual or too sentimental, a supreme stylist or a didactic practitioner of self-absorbed musings. He also ended up as something of a media preoccupation by virtue of his becoming a recluse for most of his adult life; about all that was ever known of his personal life was that he lived and wrote in Cornish, N.H.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.