Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger: Author of Catcher in the Rye
Why do you want to know about Salinger?
Are you impressed by the literary value of his work? Are you especially intrigued by the fact he's a recluse? Do you feel as if you know him? That he understands you? Are you hoping that in real life he's like Holden Caulfield?
He's a recluse. People always want to know about recluses. What are they hiding? And if they're not hiding anything, what exactly is the nature of their psychopathology? Its intriguing. We wonder what it would be like to harbor such an eccentricity that only fame and money could buy. When he could be appearing on talk shows and enjoying the fame that most of us crave, he instead locks himself away and is the prison guard of his own cell.
In his biography of Salinger, Paul Alexander speculates that Salinger enjoyed, on some level, the attention that his reclusiveness generated. The mystique surrounding him has probably greatly increased his book sales. Alexander believes that every now and then when it seems interest is waning, Salinger will do or say something to get back in the public consciousness. He'll place a phone call to a reporter in San Francisco or he'll make an unexpected appearance in New York.
Where was he born and all that David Copperfield type crap?
The cold relationship with his father, his conflict from being half Jewish, and especially his traumatic experiences in World War II, were negative aspects of his life which shaped his personality and his fiction.
Salinger had early, inner conflict concerning his father, Sol, who was cold toward his son, placed pressure on him to make money and wanted him to have a secure job with high social status. He also wanted him to some day take over the family business of importing and processing meat and cheese from Eastern Europe.
1. How does this match up to Holden’s life?
The greatest source of mental trauma for Salinger was his experiences in World War II. He entered the war with a special affection for the military but soon was right in the middle of some of the most intense, savage warfare of the century. He would see with his own eyes 50 of his fellow soldiers die in a day. Sometimes as many as 200.
2. How did this tie in with Holden’s apathetic “nothing matters” mentality?
What was he like as a student growing up?
He lived on Manhattan's Upper West Side as a child and attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. Before the military academy, he flunked out of a few private schools for not even trying to do the work. Attending the military academy was probably his idea. He probably wanted to get away from his family. His mother, not his father, took him to the entrance interview and he was matriculated in just a few days. Salinger was the manager of the fencing team, just as was Holden in The Catcher in the Rye. Unlike Holden, Salinger did well at the military academy and enjoyed it.
He briefly attended New York University where he “didn't apply himself.”
3. How was this similar to Holden’s life?
What has Salinger's love life been like?
Salinger had a serious attraction to Oona O'Neill who later married Charlie Chaplin. Expecting to marry the young Oona himself, he was more than mildly embittered. For a time, some people believe, he tried to have a literary success in Hollywood just to score a point against Chaplin.
4. What could this be compared to in the story of Holden?
He watches old movies on a reel to reel projector and he has an extensive collection. He used to lend some of his films to the Dartmouth Film Society.
It might depress you to know that Salinger has always been an avid TV watcher. Gilligan's Island, Leave it to Beaver, Peyton Place, Dynasty, and obviously, Mr. Merlin. His favorite was and maybe still is The Andy Griffith Show. He watches TV while eating dinner off of a folding metal TV tray. There's now a satellite dish on his house which you can see from the public road at foot of his driveway.
5. How is this so dissimilar to Holden’s character?
Where does Salinger live?
Some biographers say he lives in the same red barn-like house he bought back in 1953 in Cornish, New Hampshire. But no, his divorced wife, Claire Douglas, got it in the settlement. J. D. moved to a similar place down the road. The two properties are connected and are a part of the 450 acres that Salinger owns. They call this first house "The Red House." Claire moved to Norwich, Vermont and then to the Pacific Northwest. The house was rented out to a group of Dartmouth students and then it was later sold.
This first house was on about 100 acres. In the early '60s he found out that on some nearby pasture land there were plans for trailer park so he jumped in and bought the land, 450 acres.
Salinger wanted to buy a place near Essex or Ipswich or Glouester, but he thought he couldn't afford it. This was before anybody knew what a great success The Catcher in the Rye would turn out to be. When he bought this first house, it didn't have running water or electricity. It's on a large piece of land, 90 to 100 acres, with other structures. The main house is hidden by a fence and birch trees. He used to spend time on a vegetable garden there.
6. What does this remind you of from The Catcher in the Rye?
Why doesn't he have his portrait on the dust jackets of his books?
Salinger was strange before the publication of The Catcher in the Rye but his reclusiveness and odd behavior took a dramatic upswing during its publication. He insisted that the cover be unadorned and that his portrait not appear on the dust cover. For a first time novelist, he placed extraordinary demands on his publishers.
Why didn't he want his picture on the cover? It could be that he was extending the attitude of the New Yorker that what really counted were the words on the printed page, not the personality that wrote them. Other writers from The New Yorker didn't shun publicity like this when they published their books but Salinger had a way of jumping into things as an extremist.
Salinger's fiction is character driven, not plot driven. He wrote with such authenticating detail that you feel like there really must have been a Caulfield family. When you close one of his books, you half expect to see the author listed as "Holden Caulfield”. The words "J. D. Salinger" wake us up from the dream like suspension of disbelief. To have put his picture or biographical information would have interfered with illusion he wanted us to at least partially believe, that the characters he made were real.
7. Did you feel like Holden was writing the book? Did you forget that it was made up by someone else?
Did he really refer to Holden as a real person?
His daughter says he talked about all of his characters as real people, not as characters in fiction. And he never mentioned the titles of his books. So yes, he probably did, when he was once quoted say, "Holder wouldn't approve."
8. What do you think Holden would not approve of that you do?