In Memoriam: JD Salinger (1919-2010)

Catcher in the Rye

Famous writer avoided publicity and did not publish an original work over the past 45 years. He was the creator of Holden Caulfield, the delinquent, alienated antihero of The Catcher in the Rye, which became required reading for generations of teenagers after its publication in 1951


By WAVE Team
from Belgrade, SERBIA


JD Salinger, famous writer, who shocked one generation and inspired another with a classic novel of teenage rebellion - "Catcher in the Rye", has died on January 28, at home in New Hampshire. He was 91 years old.

Salinger avoided publicity and did not publish an original work over the past 45 years. He was the creator of Holden Caulfield, the delinquent, alienated antihero of novel which became required reading for generations of teenagers after its publication in 1951.

The Catcher in the Rye was praised by the New York Times on publication as "an unusually brilliant first novel". But while an instant hit with many, who related to its tale of adolescent angst and adult hypocrisy, it was met with alarm in other quarters. Some school boards made it required reading. Others banned it amid protests from parents over swearing - including the frequent use of "goddam" and, more rarely, "fuck" - as well as the bad example they believed Caulfield set. John Lennon's murderer, Mark Chapman, cited The Catcher in the Rye as an inspiration for the killing in 1980.

Salinger published other books, including the well-received Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey, before he became an almost total recluse. His last published work, Hapworth 16, 1924, was printed in the New Yorker in 1965.

Salinger was born in New York on New Year's Day 1919. His father, of Polish Jewish origin, became wealthy importing cheese and meat; his mother posed as Jewish, and he did not find out that she was not until after his barmitzvah. He had his own troubled history in various schools until he was dispatched at 15 to Valley Forge military academy. There he began writing and published his first story in a fiction magazine in 1940. In 1942 he was conscripted to fight in the second world war and took part in the Normandy landings. He married a German woman while serving with the occupation forces after the defeat of Hitler. They moved to America but the marriage fell apart. Salinger took up Zen Buddhism.

He found fame disagreeable, and the year after the publication of his most famous novel he left New York City for the town of Cornish, New Hampshire. There he remarried, to Claire Douglas, had two children, and then divorced in 1967.


(Published: 09.02.2010.)