Jerome Salinger works. Jerome Salinger, short biography

He started his career with short stories. He found himself at the peak of his creativity after the publication of the novel “The Catcher in the Rye.” However, as soon as the cult youth book became a bestseller, its author suddenly turned into a hermit: he settled in a house behind a high fence, stopped giving interviews, and even banned the republication of early works.

Son of a merchant

Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 in New York. The father of the American prose writer, Solomon, was the son of a rabbi, was engaged in the import of cheese and meat, and his mother was a Catholic. Before her marriage, she changed her name and converted to Judaism in order to become the wife of a man from a wealthy Jewish family.

Jerome Salinger did not excel academically as a child. When the future writer was kicked out of preparatory school, his father decided to educate him. Solomon Salinger sent his son to a military academy. And this event played an important role in the fate of Jerome. It was there that he became truly organized. And, oddly enough, Jerome Salinger began writing at the military academy.

He composed his stories at night, with a flashlight, covered with a blanket. The future classic of American literature wrote without ceasing. But at that time he did not dream of Hemingway's laurels. Jerome wanted to become an actor.

Literary debut

Businessman Solomon Salinger did not take his son's writing habits seriously. He hoped that he would someday continue the family business. But the young writer was not interested in selling cheese. This caused a lot of problems in the businessman's family. As for Solomon Salinger's wife, she admired everything her son did. The young man dreamed of acting for several years, but gave preference to writing, enrolling in literary courses.

The teacher was Whit Burnett, the editor-in-chief of a popular magazine at the time. Famous authors were published in this publication. Burnett, appreciating the talent of the young Salinger, published his first story, “Teenagers.” Jerome received a small sum for this work. This was the first money that the author of The Catcher in the Rye earned as a writer.

Published in The New Yorker

But Salinger was not satisfied with the publication in Burnett's magazine. His dream was to be featured in The New Yorker. After all, it was this magazine that the Americans considered the most prestigious. It was incredibly difficult to publish your works there.

He sent his stories to The New Yorker many times. But every time I was refused. Salinger's prose, according to the magazine's editors, lacked lightness and ease. The author of overly intellectual stories did not listen to the opinions of professionals. He did not want to write in the spirit of O. Henry. Aspiring writer Jerome Salinger was looking for his own style.

It was published by other publishers. But Salinger raved about the publication in The New Yorker. And finally it happened. At the end of 1941, his story was accepted under the title “Slight Riot on Madison Avenue.” But the work turned out to be inappropriate. It was the second year of the war. The story of a young man challenging society was not relevant in the early forties. The story was accepted, but publication was canceled at the last minute. Only ten years later, Salinger's stories appeared on the pages of a prestigious magazine.

Una O'Neill

In 1941, Jerome Salinger first met this girl. Una, the daughter of a famous playwright, was only sixteen at that time. The young writer was completely smitten by her beauty. The year Salinger met her, he decided to join the army. But the medical board did not let him pass.

Jerome Salinger was an incredibly stubborn man. He was eager to serve, wrote numerous letters to the relevant authorities. And in 1942 he was called up. Una received letters from him. But soon she stopped answering. The young actress met Charlie Chaplin and married him. It was a hard blow for the writer. But it was then, after the betrayal of his beloved girl, that Jerome Salinger began writing his main novel in the first years of the war.

"Catcher in the rye"

The book was published in 1951. Some of Salinger's early works are contained in this novel. Holden Caulfield is the hero not only of The Catcher in the Rye, but also of the story I'm Crazy.

The novel, which brought Salinger world fame, is largely autobiographical. Like Holden, from an early age he could not stand falsehood and stereotypical thinking. The desire for solitude is a characteristic feature of Salinger's hero. And it was precisely this feature that led to the fact that at the end of his life the writer became a recluse, whose photo was unsuccessfully hunted by the American paparazzi.

Salinger's novel caused conflicting feelings among readers. Today this book is one of the most famous in world literature. The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” was once banned in some US states. According to the public, there is too much obscene language in it.

Books

Salinger Jerome reflected in his work a person’s worldview based on Zen Buddhism, nihilism, and Tolstoyism. The most famous works of the American prose writer:

1. “Banana fish are good to catch.”
2. "Sad motive."
3. “Higher to the rafters, carpenters.”
4. "Teddy".
5. "Franny and Zooey"

The writer spent his last years in solitude. He was engaged in spiritual practices and continued to write. But since the early sixties he has not published a single story. Jerome Salinger passed away in 2010 at his New Hampshire mansion.

Jerome David Salinger- American writer whose works were published in The New Yorker magazine in the 2nd half of the 1940s and in the 1950s.

His writing career began with the publication of short stories in New York magazines. During the Second World War, the writer took part in the military operations of American troops in Europe from the very beginning of the Normandy landings. He took part in the liberation of several concentration camps.

His first story, “The Young Folks,” was published in Story magazine in 1940. Salinger’s first major fame came from the short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948), the story of one day in the lives of a young man, Seymour Glass, and his wife.

Eleven years after its first publication, Salinger released his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), which met with unanimous critical acclaim and remains especially popular among high school and college students, who find in the views and behavior of the hero, Holden Caulfield , a close echo of my own moods. The book was banned in several countries and in some places in the United States for being depressing and using abusive language, but is now included in the recommended reading lists in many American schools.

In 1953, the collection “Nine Stories” was published. In the 60s, the short stories “Franny and Zooey” and the story “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” were published.

After the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” gained tremendous popularity, Salinger began to lead the life of a recluse, refusing to give interviews. After 1965 he stopped publishing, writing only for himself. Moreover, he imposed a ban on the republication of early works (before “The Banana Fish is Well Caught”) and stopped several attempts to publish his letters. In recent years, he had virtually no interaction with the outside world, living behind a high fence in a mansion in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, and practicing a variety of spiritual practices, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, yoga, macrobiotics, dianetics, and alternative medicine. .

All these years he did not stop writing, but lost all interest in publishing his books during his lifetime. According to Margaret Salinger, her father developed a special system of marks - manuscripts that should be published after death without any editing are marked in red, and those in need of editing are marked in blue. However, nothing is known about the exact number of future bestsellers.

As, indeed, about other aspects of the writer’s life. Local residents say they sometimes saw him at the Universalist church and in local restaurants. They had long since become accustomed to the proximity of the classic and had come to respect his reclusiveness. Everyone knew about the location of his home here, but it was revealed to crazy fans all these years with obvious reluctance. Moreover, attempts to penetrate this ivory tower were not particularly successful for anyone.

The last time the writer’s name appeared in the information field was in 2009, when he filed a lawsuit against the Swede Frederik Kolting. The author, hiding under a pseudonym, dared to compose a sequel to “The Catcher in the Rye” called “60 Years Later: Coming Out of the Rye.” The novel tells the story of a certain 76-year-old Mr. K., who escapes from a nursing home and wanders around New York, remembering his youth, like Holden Caulfield, who once escaped from a boarding school. Salinger rightly accused the Swede, who went by the pseudonym J.D. California, of plagiarism, and in July last year his claim was satisfied. This summer, many people hoped that the writer would break his seclusion and talk at least a little about his life during these years, but this never happened. And he himself, it seems, did not need it. Now more than ever it becomes clear that Salinger, like no one else, understood the truism, but which has lost its meaning in our time - the author receives eternal life only thanks to his works. And this third life of Salinger is still awaiting us.

In the USSR and Russia, his works were translated and published, and gained popularity, primarily among the intelligentsia. The most successful and famous are the translations of Rita Wright-Kovalyova.

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Biography, life story of Jerome David Salinger

Jerome David Salinger is an American-born writer.

Childhood, family

Jerome was born on January 1, 1919 in New York in the family of Solomon Salinger, a Jew of Lithuanian origin. My father sold kosher smoked meats and cheeses. Mother's name was Miriam Salinger. Born into a Scots-Irish family. Solomon and Miriam had another child, a daughter, Doris, born eight years earlier than Jerome.

Early life and education

From Jerome's early years, Solomon Salinger dreamed that his son would receive a decent education. In 1936, Jerome, at the insistence of his father, graduated from military school in Valley Forge (Pennsylvania). In the summer of 1937, the young man began attending lectures at New York University, after which he went with his father to Austria and Poland for a year (in Poland, Solomon forced Jerome to study sausage production, hoping to one day transfer his business to his son).

In 1938, Jerome Salinger returned to his native land and for some time attended lectures at Ursinus College. In 1939, the young man entered Columbia University. He especially enjoyed attending lectures by Mr. Burnett, editor of Story magazine. One way or another, Jerome was unable to graduate from any of the educational institutions, which terribly angered his father. As a result, Solomon and Jerome had a terrible quarrel and stopped communicating.

Army

In 1942, Jerome Salinger was drafted into the army. He graduated from the Signal Corps Officer-Sergeant School and received the rank of sergeant. In 1943, Salinger was transferred to counterintelligence and sent to Nashville (Tennessee). On June 6, 1944, Jerome took part in the landing of airborne troops in Normandy. During his service, he managed to work with prisoners of war, and also, together with his comrades, liberated several concentration camps.

Creation

Even in his youth, Jerome Salinger began publishing short stories in New York magazines. In 1948, his story “The Banana Fish Is Good to Catch” brought him his first fame. Critics praised Salinger's talent, his ability to emphasize the most important things and his excellent command of language.

CONTINUED BELOW

After his first success, Jerome published several more of his stories, after which, in 1951, his first and only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was published. The plot of the novel is based on the narration of the story of his short life by a seventeen-year-old boy, Holden. Holden, in a very frank form, without mincing words, tells the reader about his perception of American reality, about his struggle with generally accepted moral rules, about his thoughts and experiences. Initially, the novel was intended for adults, but it gained particular popularity among young people of those years. The book made a real revolution in people's consciousness and had a huge impact on world culture of the last century. At first, the scandalous content of the novel caused considerable discontent among the censors. The book was banned in several US states and in several countries for excessive depression and profanity, which the author simply sprinkles in the novel. However, over time, the ban was lifted and “The Catcher in the Rye” was even included in the list of recommended literature for American schoolchildren to read. In the USSR, Salinger's novel appeared only ten years after his birth - Salinger's creation was published in the magazine "Foreign Literature" translated by Rita Yakovlevna Rait-Kovaleva.

Throughout his life, Jerome David Salinger wrote thirty-nine works, of which four remained unpublished (Children's Train (1944), Two Lonely Men (1944), The Birthday Boy (1946) and An Ocean Full of Balloons bowling" (1947)).

The unique style of Jerome Salinger

In almost all of Salinger's works, the main characters are children and teenagers under the age of fifteen. However, Jerome cannot be called a children's writer. In the lines written by this brilliant master of words, the theme of opposition to the norms and laws invented by people, opposition to the vile world that does not give a single chance for another life other than the one that it [the world] has prepared is easily discernible.

In most of Salenger's stories, the main characters are members of the Glass family (they appear in "Banana Fish Good," "Seymour: An Introduction," "Franny and Zooey" and other works). Through these characters, Jerome reveals the theme of confrontation between an individual endowed with talent and the outside world, cruel and merciless.

Reclusion

After the resounding success of the novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” Jerome Salenger went into the shadows and began to lead the life of a real recluse. He refused to communicate with the press and did not give any interviews. In 1965, Salenger stopped publishing his publications. He imposed a strict ban on the republication of his early works written before 1948, and several times suppressed attempts by publishers to publish his letters. Jerome wanted to leave this vile world once and for all. To do this, he even moved to the small town of Cornish (New Hampshire) and began to live in a house surrounded by a high fence. Being away from the outside world, from crowds of people, Salinger became interested in Buddhism, Hinduism, yoga, dianetics and macrobiotics. Sometimes he did small experiments on himself - for example, he could eat only raw vegetables for a whole week, then for several days he could eat only meat. Jerome considered his own urine a panacea and drank it for any manifestation of health problems.

Personal life

After the war, Jerome worked for some time as an American counterintelligence officer. Salinger was perfect for this position, since with all his soul he fiercely hated Nazism and everything connected with it. One day he arrested a girl named Sylvia, who was a member of the Nazi Party. Paradoxically, Sylvia became Jerome's wife. True, their marriage was very short-lived. Ultimately, Sylvia's hatred of Jews and Jerome's hatred of Nazis won out over the love and tenderness between the spouses.

In 1950, Jerome Salinger met sixteen-year-old Claire Douglas, a girl from a highly respected British family. Jerome and Claire got married when the latter had not even graduated from high school. Salinger took Claire to his own home in Corniche. The house was in a terrible state - there was neither normal heating nor water supply. However, Jerome forced his teenage wife to cook him gourmet meals every day and demanded that his bed linen be changed twice a week. A few years later, Claire realized she was pregnant. Jerome did not want to have children, but did not do anything. He only began to treat the unfortunate girl even worse than before. At one point, Claire even began to think about suicide, but changed her mind in time. In 1995, Claire gave birth to a girl. Salinger wanted to name his daughter Phoebe in honor of one of the characters in his story, Holden's sister, but Claire insisted that the baby be named Margaret. A little later, another child was born in the family - son Matthew. Despite the fact that children were unwanted for Jerome Salinger, he was a good father.

In 1985, Jerome and Claire divorced. And at sixty-six years old, Salenger still had a passion for young girls. His third wife was young Colleen, who was barely sixteen years old. Colleen voluntarily agreed to live in the Corniche in a separate hut of her elderly husband.

Death

On January 27, 2010, Jerome David Salinger died at his home. At the time of his death, the writer was ninety-one years old.

Jerome David Salinger - American writer - born January 1, 1919 in NYC. His father is Solomon Salinger (1887-1974), a Jew of Lithuanian origin, a wealthy wholesale merchant of smoked meats and cheeses. Jerome's mother, Miriam Salinger (who was named Mary Gillick before the wedding), is of Scots-Irish descent and converted to Judaism. Doris, Jerome's only sister, was eight years and two months older than him.

The father sought to give his son a good education. In 1936 Jerome graduated from military school in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Here his literary debut took place: Jerome wrote three stanzas for the school anthem, which, by the way, is still performed to this day. Summer 1937 Jerome attends lectures at New York University, in 1937-1938 travels to Austria and Poland (here in Bydgoszcz, at the direction of his father, he studies sausage production). Returning to my homeland, in 1938 attends lectures at Ursinus College (Pennsylvania). In 1939 enters Columbia University, where he listens to a course of lectures on a short story, which was read by the editor of Story magazine, W. Burnett. Jerome never graduated from any of the higher educational institutions, showing neither any particular success nor career aspirations, which displeased his father, with whom he eventually quarreled forever.

In 1942 began dating Una O'Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, who, however, soon met Charlie Chaplin and married him. In the spring of the same year he was drafted into the army, graduated from the officer-sergeant school of the signal troops, in 1943 With the rank of sergeant, he was transferred to counterintelligence and sent to Nashville (Tennessee).

June 6, 1944 Sergeant Salinger, as part of the counterintelligence department of the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, participated in the landings in Normandy, then in the battles of the Bulge and the Hürtgen Forest. He worked with prisoners of war and took part in the liberation of several concentration camps (including, apparently, the Dachau concentration camp). At the front, he met the war correspondent and writer Ernest Hemingway, whose personal qualities and writing style made a great impression on Salinger; in turn, Hemingway appreciated the literary talents of the aspiring author. After the victory over the Third Reich, having recovered from combat mental trauma, he worked on the denazification of Germany.

In Germany, Salinger got married, the marriage was short, spring 1946 the marriage was dissolved on Salinger's initiative.

Salinger's writing career began with the publication of short stories in New York magazines. His first story, The Young Folks, was published in 1940 in Story magazine, founded by Whit Burnett. Since 1941 began publishing in The New Yorker. Salinger's first serious fame came from the short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” 1948 ) is the story of one day in the life of a young man, Seymour Glass, and his wife. Late 1940s began to study Zen Buddhism.

Eleven years after the first publication, July 16, 1951, Salinger's only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is coming out of print. 1951 ), on which the writer worked since 1941. The novel met with unanimous approval from critics and still remains popular among high school students and students, who find in the views and behavior of the hero Holden Caulfield a close echo of their own moods. The book was banned in several countries and some US states for being depressing and using abusive language, but is now included in the recommended reading lists in many American schools. By 1961 The novel has already been translated in twelve countries.

By the time the novel was published, twenty-six of Salinger’s works had already been published in various periodicals, including seven of the nine short stories that made up in 1953 separate book "Nine Stories".

In the 1960s The short stories “Franny and Zooey” and the story “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” are published. Salinger makes the heroes of these works - members of the highly intellectual, sophisticated Glass family - conductors of his ideas - a synthesis of Zen Buddhism, moderate mysticism, beatnik nihilism and Tolstoyism. "Franny and Zooey" speaks to the 19th century religious work from Russia, "A Wanderer's Account to His Spiritual Father," which made the latter popular outside of theology.

In 1955 At the age of 36, Salinger marries student Claire Douglas, daughter of art critic Robert Langton Douglas. The couple had a daughter, Margaret ( 1955 ) and son Matthew ( 1960 ). Margaret later wrote a memoir, Dream Catcher. Salinger insisted that his wife quit her studies four months before graduation and move in with him, which she did. Their daughter was often sick as a child, but the exalted Salinger refused to call a doctor. Claire later admitted to her daughter that she was “walking on the edge” and was thinking about killing her and herself. On a trip to New York, she almost did this, but ran away from the hotel with Margaret. A few months later, Salinger convinced her to return to Corniche.

After The Catcher in the Rye gained popularity, Salinger became a recluse, refusing to give interviews. After 1965 he stopped publishing, writing only for himself. Salinger imposed a ban on the republication of his early works (before the story “The Bananafish is Well Caught”) and stopped several attempts to publish his letters. In the last years of his life, he had virtually no contact with the outside world, living behind a high fence in a mansion in the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, and practicing various spiritual practices (Buddhism, Hinduism, yoga, macrobiotics, dianetics), as well as alternative medicine, glossolalia, homeopathy, acupuncture and Christian Science.

Jerome David Salinger died at his home in New Hampshire January 27, 2010 at the age of 91.

Works:
1940 – The Young Folks
1940 – Go See Eddie
1941 – I’m sorry, I’ll correct myself (The Hang of It)
1941 – The Heart of a Broken Story
1942 – The Long Debut of Lois Taggett
1942 – Personal Notes of an Infantryman
1943 – The Varioni Brothers
1943 – The Inverted Forest
1944 – By mutual consent (Both Parties Concerned)
1944 – Soft Boiled Sergeant
1944 – Last day of the last furlough ("Last Day of the Last Furlough")
1944 – Once a week – you won’t be gone (Once a Week Won’t Kill You)
1945 – Elaine
1945 – I’m crazy (I’m Crazy)
1945 – A Boy in France
1945 – Herring in a barrel (This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise)
1945 – The Stranger
1946 – Slight Rebellion off Madison
1948 – A Girl I Knew
1948 – Sad motive (Blue melody)
1948 – Bananafish are good to catch (A Perfect Day for Bananafish)
1948 – Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut
1948 – Just Before the War with the Eskimos
1949 – The Laughing Man
1949 – In the boat (Down at the Dinghy)
1950 – Dear Esmé – with Love and Squalor
1951 – And these lips and green eyes... (Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes)
1951 – Catcher in the Rye
1952 – De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period
1953 – Teddy
1955 – Higher to the rafters, carpenters
1959 – Seymour: Introduction
1961 – Franny and Zooey
1965 – Hapworth 16th Day 1924 (Hapworth 16, 1924)

J.D. Salinger was born and raised in the fashionable area of ​​New York - Manhattan. His father, a Jew by nationality, was a successful kosher cheese merchant, his mother had Scots-Irish roots. As a child, Jerome's name was Sonny. The Salinger family had a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue. After several years of prep school, Jerome attended Valley Forge Military Academy (1934-1936). Friends at the academy later recalled that he was a caustic and witty person. In 1937, at the age of 18, Salinger spent five months in Europe. From 1937 to 1938 he studied at Ursinus College, and then at New York University. She falls in love with Oona O'Neil and writes letters to her every day; later, to Salinger's considerable surprise, she married Charlie Chaplin, who was much older than her.

In 1939, Salinger studied short story writing at Columbia University with Witt Burnett, founder and editor of Story Magazine. During World War II, Salinger was drafted and served in the infantry, participated in the Normandy operation, his comrades said that he was very brave, a real hero. In the very first months spent in Europe, Salinger managed to write several stories and meet Ernest Hemingway in Paris. He also took part in one of the bloodiest episodes of the war at Hürtgenwald, a futile battle where he witnessed the horrors of war.

In his famous story “Dear Esmé—With Love and Squalor,” Salinger portrayed a tired American soldier. He begins a correspondence with a thirteen-year-old British girl, who helps him regain his zest for life. According to Salinger biographer Ian Hamilton, the writer himself was hospitalized due to stress. After serving as an army signalman and counterintelligence officer from 1942 to 1946, he devoted himself to writing. He played poker with other aspiring writers and was known to be dark in character but always winning. Salinger considered Hemingway and Steinbeck to be second-rate writers, but praised Melville. In 1945, Salinger married a French woman named Sylvia, she was a doctor. They were later divorced, and in 1955 Salinger married Claire Douglas, daughter of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas. The marriage ended in 1967 as Salinger delved into his inner world and Zen Buddhism.

Salinger's early stories appeared in such publications as Story, which published his first story in 1940, the Saturday Evening Post and Esquire, and then The New Yorker, which published almost all of his later stories. texts. In 1948, A Perfect Day For Bananafish appeared, about Seymour Glass committing suicide. This is the earliest mention of the Glass family, stories about which would become the main focus of his writing. The Glass cycle continued in the collections Franny and Zooey (1961), Higher the Rafters, Carpenters (1963) and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). Several stories are told from Buddy Glass's point of view. “The 16th Day of Hepworth 1924” is written in the form of a letter from summer camp, in which seven-year-old Seymour portrays himself and his little brother Buddy. “So: when I look around and listen to those five or six most original old American poets - there may be more - and also read the numerous, talented eccentric poets and - especially lately - those able, innovative stylists, I am almost completely certain that we have had only three or four almost absolutely irreplaceable poets and that, in my opinion, Seymour will certainly be counted among them.”(“Seymore: Introduction”, trans. R. Wright-Kovalyova).

Twenty stories published in Collier's Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and The New Yorker between 1941 and 1948 appeared in a pirated two-volume 1974 edition, The Complete Unpublished Stories of J. .D. Salinger." Many of them reflect Salinger's military service. Subsequently, the writer experienced Indo-Buddhist influence. He became a passionate devotee of The Teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, a book on Hindu mysticism that was translated into English by Swami Nikhilananda and Joseph Campbell.

Salinger's first novel, The Catcher in the Rye, was immediately selected as the Book of the Month Club and gained enormous international fame. It sold 250,000 copies annually. Salinger did not try to help the publicity, and they stated that his photographs should not be used in connection with the book. He later turned down requests for a film adaptation of the book.

Early reviews of the work were mixed, although most critics found the novel brilliant. Its title is taken from a line by Robert Burns that is misquoted by protagonist Holden Caulfield, who sees himself as a “catcher in the rye” who must keep all the children in the world from falling off some cliff of madness. The work is written as a monologue, in living slang. The troubled sixteen-year-old hero - like Salinger was in his youth - runs away from school during the Christmas holidays to New York, to find himself and lose his virginity. He spends the evening going to a nightclub, meets with a prostitute to no avail, and the next day runs into an old girlfriend. Then he gets drunk and sneaks home drunk. Holden's former teacher is harassing him. Holden meets with his sister to tell her about running away from home and having a nervous breakdown. The novel's humor is similar to Mark Twain's classic works “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” but its worldview is more disappointing. Holden describes everything as “fake” and is constantly in search of sincerity. He is one of the first characters to embody teenage existential angst, but he is full of life, and in many ways he is the literary opposite of the young Werther, Goethe's hero.

There were occasional rumors that Salinger would publish another novel, or that he was publishing under a pseudonym, perhaps like Thomas Pynchon. “A true artist, I noticed, can withstand anything. (Even praise, as I readily hope)”, Salinger wrote in Seymour: An Introduction. Since the late 60s he has avoided publicity. Journalists assumed that since he did not give interviews, he had something to hide. In 1961, Time magazine sent a team of journalists to investigate his private life. “I like to write. I love to write. But I write only for myself and for my own pleasure,” Salinger said in a 1974 interview with a New York Times reporter. However, according to Joyce Maynard, who has long been close to the author since the 1970s, Salinger still writes, but does not allow anyone to see the work. Maynard was eighteen years old when she received the letter from the author, and after intense correspondence she moved in with him.

Ian Hamilton's unapproved biography of Salinger was rewritten because he disagreed with the extensive citation of his personal letters. New version, “Finding J.D. Salinger”, appeared in 1988. In 1992, a fire broke out at Salinger's Cornish home, but he managed to escape from reporters who saw an opportunity to interview him. Since the late 1980s, Salinger has been married to Colleen O'Neill. Maynard's account of her relationship with Salinger, At Home in the World, appeared in October 1998. Salinger broke his silence through his lawyers in 2009, when they began legal action to stop the publication of an unauthorized sequel to Caulfield's story, entitled Sixty Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, published in Britain under the pseudonym John David California. The 33-year-old Swedish writer, Fredrik Colting, had previously published humorous books.

About “The Catcher In The Rye”
part 2 , part 3
Story about the book (in English).