J. D. Salinger shares at least one important trait with his
character Holden Caulfield- a powerful urge to separate himself from society.
Holden, the chief character of The Catcher in the Rye, tells us that he wants to live on
the edge of the woods; Salinger realized this dream by retreating to a small farm town in
New Hampshire, where the townspeople seem as devoted to his privacy as he is himself.
There, in Cornish, Salinger has been able to escape the distractions of the literary world
and to avoid people who have sought to capitalize on his instant fame following the
publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951.
Little is known about Salingers life since he moved to Cornish. Local residents
enjoy protecting Salingers anonymity, and interviews with them typically have
produced bland, noncommittal responses that make Salinger sound about as interesting as
last months newspaper. Salinger himself refuses to be interviewed.
The facts of Salingers earlier life, however, are on the record. Jerome David
Salinger was born in New York City in 1919, the son of a prosperous importer of meat and
cheese. He was a mediocre student in the public school he attended, and after he flunked
out of the private McBurney School, his parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy
in Pennsylvania.
He later spent less than a month at New York University and then took a short-story course
at Columbia University. His first story was published in 1940.
From 1942 to 1946 he was in the Army, continuing to write whenever I can find time
and an unoccupied foxhole. He returned to New York in 1946, and in the next few
years had stories published in various periodicals, notably The New Yorker.
In 1953 Salinger met Claire Douglas, a British-born Radcliffe student. She apparently
became the model for more than one of his characters. They were married two years later,
and they have two children, Margaret Ann, born in 1955, and Matthew, born in 1960. They
were divorced in 1967.
Salingers later published works have all been stories. Most of them deal with the
children of the Glass family, who, like Salinger, have a Jewish father and a Christian
mother. These stories have been collected in Nine Stories (1953); Franny and Zooey (1961);
and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). All three
books received considerable critical praise and were very popular.
Salingers published literary output declined over the years. By the early 1980s, he
had not published a work in some twenty years. Still, he is considered one of the most
vital writers of the century. His reputation rests largely on The Catcher in the Rye.
In Chapter 12 of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is at a bar listening to a jazz
piano player whose work he enjoys. The applause from the audience, and the musicians
acceptance of it, lead Holden to say: I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an
actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, Id hate it. I
wouldnt even want them to clap for me.... Id play it in the goddam
closet. When you think of the life that Salinger chose while he was still a young
man with a promising literary future, you realize that these sentences express his
worldview as much as Holdens. Careful readers of Salingers fiction have found
many other statements that might also be the sentiments of a man who deserted fame in
order to be able to work on his own.
Its not only the feelings about fame that the author and his character have in
common. Salinger has often said that children are the best people he knows, a statement
that Holden would happily echo. Salinger left New York City primarily because he found its
literary circles at best unsatisfying; Holden cant stand being surrounded by phonies
everywhere he goes.
Salinger grew up in New York City, and so did Holden. Salinger went to a prep school, and
so does Holden. Like Holden, Salinger was a bright child whose grades in school were not
an accurate reflection of his intelligence. Its clear from The Catcher in the Rye
and his other works that Salinger is one of those writers whose works seem to flow
directly from experience. He tends to write about familiar territory. But this is far from
saying that his characters are strictly autobiographical.
In addition, this kind of information is of less importance to a reader of the novel than
it is to a biographer. If you were doing research for a biography of Salinger, it could be
vital for you to learn that one of his characters was based on a real person. But
its almost irrelevant to an enjoyment of the novel.
To many contemporary readers encountering it for the first time, The Catcher in the Rye
fits neatly into a classification called Young Adult Fiction. This is a category that
includes serious novels dealing with teenage characters, and written with a teenage
reading audience in mind.
Lumping Salingers book together with thousands of others in this category, however,
doesnt do justice to The Catcher in the Rye. When the book was published in 1951,
there was no such category as Young Adult Fiction. Salinger attracted the attention of the
reading audience because he was breaking new ground.
Not only did The Catcher in the Rye have a teenager for a central character; he spoke in a
manner that was easily recognizable as genuine, and he talked about matters that were
serious enough to make even the most complacent reader a bit uncomfortable. One of those
matters was his inability to fit into the world of adults.
Such books may be very common today, but in 1951 a teenager talking about his innermost
concerns was considered a somewhat eccentric literary device- a reviewer for The New York
Times didnt even take the book seriously.
Salingers novel was definitely a groundbreaker in its field. As you read it, try to
envision the impact this novel had on its first readers back in 1951. If youre like
most readers then, youll learn much about yourself as well as about Holden Caulfield
as you explore the world of The Catcher in the Rye. |