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The 1950 s were a time of conservatism, the traditional American family, and similarity. During this time of the cherished American dream, a radical writer, who spoke to a nation of young individuals and alienated adults, emerged. Jerome David Salinger, generally referred to as J. D. Salinger, surfaced as a spokesman for a generation of post-World War II students and became one of the most popular American fiction writers. Salinger is most widely known for his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye.
He also published thirteen short stories between the years of 1948 and 1959 and this further increased his reputation as an author. Salinger wrote in a time where is was not better to be different. Despite this emphasis on similarity, Salinger wrote about unconventional themes and criticized American society. Although J. D. Salinger s works have always been surrounded by controversy, Salinger became one of the most popular and influential American writers to appear after World War II.
Although little is known about him as a person, J. D. Salinger s work champions the defiance of adult phoniness and has impacted several generations since their publication. Salinger was born in New York City on New Years Day in 1919. The son of a Jewish father and Christian mother, Sol and Miriam, Salinger grew up in a Manhattan apartment.
The younger of two children, Salinger enjoyed a close personal relationship with his older sister Doris. His early education consisted of a variety of private preparatory schools. Salinger earned average grades, but had immense trouble remaining in one school because, he did not fit in with the school environment. He was expelled from three preparatory schools, before finally graduating from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1936.
This period of his life greatly influenced J. D. Salinger s views on society and schooling. His writings display the pain of his early teenage years. For example, in his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, Valley Forge served as a model for Salinger s fictional Pencey Preparatory school. Many of Salinger s works parallel and reflect many aspects of his own life.
J. D. Salinger s collegial education, involved the same sorts of troubles as his primary education. He attended New York University, Ursinus University in Pennsylvania, and Columbia University.
He dropped out of Ursinus University in the middle of the first semester because of academic difficulties. Salinger was an intelligent individual, but did not quite fit in educational institutions. Despite these problems, college opened the doors of the literary world for Salinger. For example, Salinger took his first writing course in short story writing at Columbia University. While attending Columbia University, he came into contact with Whit Burnett, Salinger s teacher and the publisher of an influential periodical, Story. By 1940, Salinger s stories began to appear in periodicals throughout New York.
Salinger devoted most of his college life to writing until the beginning of World War II. In 1942, Salinger enlisted in the United States Army. During this period he served in Europe and became a staff sergeant. His participation in the liberation of France and the Normandy campaign earned him five battle stars. Throughout the War, Salinger carried a portable typewriter and continued to write and publish about his experiences and the other GIs in the war (Hamilton 12). After his return from military service, Salinger s name and writing style became increasingly associated with The New Yorker.
During the late 1940 s he continued to publish numerous short stories, which later were published again as a collection of short stories. In 1951, J. D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye with help from the Little Brown publishing company. This novel won critical and popular acclaim and was on the New York Times best seller list for over seven months.
Salinger now became a nationally known figure. Seeing the success of his first novel, Salinger composed a collection of short stories in 1953, and released a selection of his best works in Nine Stories. Following the release of Nine Stories, Salinger became very reclusive and published less. In 1961, he again published a work composed of a combination of previous short stories called Franny and Zooey. The Catcher in the Rye is an intimate examination of basic human issues such as honesty, love, and religion, within Salinger's larger theme of alienation (Lyner 96). The Catcher in the Rye is the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield, and his coming-of-age.
Holden is the son of wealthy parents who live near Central Park in New York. He narrates the story from a psychiatric institution near Hollywood. The story is of three days of Holden's life after he is expelled from Pencey Preparatory school because he failed four out of five of his classes. The novel begins with a flashback to the days before he is expected to be home for Christmas vacation. Salinger shows life at Pencey Preparatory from Holden's perspective. Holden leaves the school early and plans to spend time on his own in New York City.
Though Holden does have friends at school and in New York, he is plagued with loneliness and alienation. There is much more to The Catcher in the Rye than its story. Salinger used everyday language, symbolism, and a first person point of view very effectively. Telling the story from Holden's perspective also allowed Salinger to use common teenage slang.
Salinger's style best shows Holden's change of mood, his refusal to admit his own emotions, and his denial of reality. Salinger's language presents a heart breaking adolescent. This is effectively done in all of his other novels as well. One of the underlying themes in The Catcher in the Rye is that of innocents versus the phonies. The nonconformist Holden strongly admires innocence, and despises phoniness. The extraordinary successes of Salinger's first novel, encouraged his publishers were determined to publish more of his works.
The next book he released in 1953 was entitled Nine Stories. This was a collection of nine of his best stories, which had been published in the New Yorker. The most famous stories published in Nine Stories were A Perfect Day for Bananafish, The Laughing Man, and For Esme with Love and Squalor. Most of these nine stories focus on children.
In each story, Salinger's children are fragile, odd, and intelligent, whereas his grown-ups seem overthrown down by environment and very unsympathetic. This childhood innocence is a recurring theme in Salinger's works. From the outside, these stories are often humorous, but from the inside, they are about heartbreak. Each of the stories surrounds the themes of innocence, love, death, and corruption (Lyner 96). In each of Salinger's stories the recurring theme concerns people who do not fit in with the traditional American culture. His characters in The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, and Franny and Zooey are intelligent, but socially lacking.
They must choose between the phony real world and a morally pure, innocent world. All of Salinger's characters also reflect Salinger himself. He tends to write about familiar territory and this often flows directly from personal experience. For example, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden has numerous similarities between Salinger. They are both very bright individuals, but were both expelled from served preparatory schools; they both spent time in a mental institution; they both adored and respected their sisters; and they both dreamed about living in seclusion. Salinger's themes have had an extraordinary impact on American society, the themes of loneliness, death, isolation, innocence, and alienation are present in each his works.
Salinger was breaking new ground, and deviating from traditional values. Salinger's stories were told in a common language, yet talked about serious subjects. How did the nation react to the new ideals presented in these stories? The popular the reaction of the people was as divided as the literary criticism. Salinger was denounced by many for his use of profane language and his criticism of society; however, his work was lauded by others. Salinger's novel and stories have even been banned in school, libraries, and reading lists throughout the country because of the strong language, sexual subject matter, and social criticism.
Despite these disputes, children and teens of today can still relate to the feelings of his characters. Thus, Salinger's books have greatly changed the feelings of our nation. But how did Salinger's success and the controversy surrounding his works impact Salinger himself? Well, in 1953 Salinger escaped the public and moved to Cornish, New Hampshire. Very little is known about Salinger himself because since the early 1950 s Salinger has continued to remain a recluse. At first, Salinger continued to publish fiction from his isolation, but published his last story in 1965.
Since then he has withdrawn from publishing and the public life altogether... Salinger has lived in seclusion from interviewers, fans, and everyone in the literary world. Salinger strongly wants his privacy- he even throws away his fan mail. Salinger has been remarkably successful in withholding information about his personal life, and it has become an obsession. He has closed down Internet sources, stopped the publication of his biographies, and placed No Trespassing signs surrounding his private property. Despite his efforts, Salinger and his works remains a subject of discussion.
By the middle of the twentieth century, Salinger was viewed as a leading an American realist. However, with recognition came criticism controversy. Some critics believe that Salinger's works are magnificent, and intriguing, while others see Salinger's novels as repetitive and take too few risks (Salinger 2). For example, Stanley Hyman, author of J. D.
Salinger's House of Glass states: I think that Jerome David Salinger is the most talented fiction writer in America. He can bring characters wonderfully to life and has a marvelous sensitivity to the young. (Westbrook 298) Yet others argue that Salinger's stories are becoming too predictable and repetitive (Salinger 2). Yet others, argue that Salinger's stories are becoming too predictable and repetitive. Some literary critics have compared Salinger to the great American writers.
Salinger is allied to the joyful mysticism of Whitman, but he responds, too, to the mystical anguish of Emily Dickinson as well as to the macabre humor of Mark Twain. according to James E. Miller (Westbrook 299). At the opposite pole, Salinger has been called one of the most gifted minor writers or one of todays best little writers by Martin Green (Westbrook 298). Despite this controversy, critics are in widespread agreement when it comes to Salinger's ability to capture the idiom of contemporary speech. Salinger has been called perhaps one of the greatest word-weavers.
Salinger has effectively provoked comment, debate, and disagreement throughout the nation. For nearly fifty years, J. D. Salinger has had a strong, continuing effect on American culture, education, and the art of fiction. He has had a great influence on the beliefs our nation. Salinger spoke to a country of young individuals and estranged adults.
He wrote works about characters like himself who could not adapt to the traditional American culture. Salinger himself had to choose between living in a phony world in which he could not understand, or a morally pure, world in isolation. Salinger chooses to be a recluse and to live alone in the small town of Cornish, New Hampshire. Salinger says that he likes to write but he writes just for himself and his own pleasure. Salinger is a bizarre and peculiar writer. His style, expression, and tone are unique and illustrate to the readers the real intentions of his writings.
They compel the readers to contemplate religion, corruption, innocence, sexuality, and love. Salinger's characters reflect the emotions, feelings, and the beliefs of Salinger himself. Salinger s stories could even be autobiographical. He is a real life illustration of his works.
Salinger is a combination of Holden Caulfield, and other characters in his books that defy phoniness and serve as a model for generations. J. D. Salinger is an American author who has served as an icon which has defined adolescent rebellion for generations. Works Cited Hamilton, Ian. In Search of J.
D. Salinger. London, England. William Heinmann, 1988. Hart, James D. Salinger, J (jerome) D (avid).
Oxford Companion to American Literature, 5 th edition. 1983 ed. 663. Lundquist, James. J. D. Salinger. New York, NY. : The Continuum Publishing Company, 1988.
Lyner, Mark. How to Avoid Salinger Syndrome. Time. 5 July 1996: 96. Salinger, J (jerome) D (avid). Contemporary Authors. EDS.
Barbara Harte and Carolyn Riley. Vols. 5 - 8. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co. 1969. Vertical File.
Salinger, J (jerome) D (avid). Contemporary Authors. Ed. Susan M.
Troy. Vol. 39. Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co. , 1992. 332 - 338. Westbrook, Max. , J (jerome) D (avid) Salinger Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed.
C. Riley. Vol. 1, Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co. , 1973, 84. Vols. 295 - 300. Salinger, J (jerome) D (avid).
Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. C. Riley. Vol. 1, Detroit, Michigan: Gale Research Co. , 1973, 84.
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