J.D. Salinger: 1919-2010 Hillel Italie / associated Press
J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose “The Catcher in the Rye” shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, died Wednesday. he was 91.
Salinger died of natural causes at his home, the author’s son said in a statement from Salinger’s literary representative. he had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.
“The Catcher in the Rye,” with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence.
“Catcher,” narrated from a mental facility, begins with Holden recalling his expulsion from a Pennsylvania boarding school for failing four classes and for general apathy. Enraged by all the “phonies” who make “me so depressed I go crazy,” Holden soon became American literature’s most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn.
The novel’s sales are astonishing — more than 60 million copies worldwide — and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams — to never grow up.
“The Catcher in the Rye” became both required and restricted reading, periodically banned by a school board or challenged by parents worried by its frank language and the irresistible chip on Holden’s shoulder.
The cult of “Catcher” turned tragic in 1980 when crazed Beatles fan mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, citing Salinger’s novel as an inspiration and stating that “this extraordinary book holds many answers.”
Salinger’s other books don’t equal the influence or sales of “Catcher.” The novel “Franny and Zooey” is a youthful, obsessively articulated quest for redemption, featuring a memorable argument between Zooey and his mother as he attempts to read in the bathtub.
Jerome David Salinger was born Jan. 1, 1919, in New York City. His father was a wealthy importer of cheeses and meat, and the family lived for years on Park Avenue.
He was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy at age 15, where he wrote at night by flashlight beneath the covers and eventually earned his only diploma. in 1940, he published his first fiction, “The Young Folks,” in Story magazine.
He served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, carrying a typewriter with him most of the time.
Salinger became famous for not wanting to be famous.
Against Salinger’s will, the curtain was parted in recent years. in 1998, author Joyce Maynard published her memoir “At Home in the World,” in which she detailed her eight-month affair with Salinger.
She drew an unflattering picture of a controlling personality with eccentric eating habits.
In 2009, Salinger sued to halt publication of John David California’s “60 Years Later,” an unauthorized sequel to “Catcher” that imagined Holden in his 70s, misanthropic as ever.
Salinger’s alleged adoration of children apparently did not extend to his own. in 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger’s “Dreamcatcher” portrayed the writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine and spoke in tongues.