J. D. Salinger was born and raised in Manhattan. His
formative years were shaped by the philosophies of what is called The Lost Generation.
These were a group of writers and artists that lived and worked in Europe after World
War I and up to The Great Depression. While Salinger was too young to really be one of
them (he was born in 1919), he was greatly influenced by their work – the hopelessness
that came from witnessing “the war to end all wars.” These writers included Hemingway,
Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot, among others.
Salinger in fact met and carried on a correspondence with Ernest Hemingway, whose
writing particularly influenced him.
Salinger was drafted
during World War II and served as an interrogator because he spoke French and German. He
was involved in liberating a concentration camp. His experiences during the war caused a
mental breakdown (we might call it PTSD today) and he was hospitalized for awhile
because of this. He had some early relationship issues with women (like Holden), but
eventually married when he was in his
mid-30s.
The Catcher in the Rye was
published in 1951, during the Cold War. His anti-hero, Holden, is a classic
representation of the alienated adolescent and became insanely popular with young people
growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. Salinger became a recluse in his later life and
stopped publishing stories in 1965.
Like many of his
contemporaries, he became interested in different religions and became a Buddhist for
awhile as well as a Christian Scientist and Scientologist. His life cannot really be
described as happy – perhaps “searching” would be a better word. His alienation comes
out as a theme in many of his writings and almost all of his stories, novellas and
novels are about innocents, children. He died in 2010 in New
Hampshire.
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