Salinger best known for his book Catcher in the Rye. (Original Caption) Cornish, N.H.: This is the home of reclusive author J.D. There are claims about the years at Valley Forge serving as inspiration for some of the material of The Catcher in the Rye, but the similarities between his real-life experiences and the events in the book remain superficial. graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, where he served as the literary editor of the school’s yearbook, Crossed Sabres. His father, Sol, was a Jewish importer, while his mother, Marie Jillich, was of Scottish-Irish descent but changed her name to Miriam upon marrying Sol. Salinger was born in Manhattan on January 1, 1919. Children: Margaret Salinger (1955), Matt Salinger (1960).Notable Works: The Catcher in the Rye (1951) Nine Stories (1953) Franny and Zooey (1961).Education: Ursinus College, Columbia University.Known For: Author of The Catcher in the Rye.The idea – or one of the ideas – was to see what would happen if orthodox biographical procedures were to be applied to a subject who actively set himself to resist and even to forestall them. According to my outline, the rebuffs I experienced would be as much part of the action as the triumphs – indeed, it would not matter much if there were no triumphs. I had it in mind to attempt not a conventional biography – that would have been impossible – but a kind of Quest for Corvo, with Salinger as quarry. At this stage, not getting a reply was the essential prologue to my plot. On the contrary, I had written just the sort of letter that Salinger – as I imagine him – would heartily despise. I had not, then, expected a response to my approach. He didn’t want there to be a record, and – so far as I could tell – he was passionate in his contempt for the whole business of ‘literary biography’. The idea of his ‘record’ being straightened would, I was aware, be thoroughly repugnant to him. I knew very well that Salinger had been approached in this manner maybe a hundred times before with no success.
I think I even gave him a couple of dates he could choose from for my visit.Īll this was, of course, entirely disingenuous. I assured him that I was a serious ‘critic and biographer’, not at all to be confused with the fans and magazine reporters who had been plaguing him for thirty years. Would he be prepared to answer a few questions? I could either visit him at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire, or I could put my really very elementary queries in the mail – which did he prefer? I pointed out to him that the few sketchy ‘facts’ about his life that had been published were sometimes contradictory and that perhaps the time had come for him to ‘set the record straight’.
Salinger, telling him that I proposed to write a study of his ‘life and work’. Four years ago, I wrote to the novelist J.
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