Salinger

by David Shields, Shane Salerno

Based on eight years of exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with more than 200 people—and published in coordination with the international theatrical release of a major documentary film from the Weinstein Company—Salinger is a global cultural event: the definitive biography of one of the most beloved and mysterious figures of the twentieth century.
For more than fifty years, the ever elusive author of The Catcher in the Rye has been the subject of a relentless stream of newspaper and magazine articles as well as several biographies. Yet all of these attempts have been hampered by a fundamental lack of access and by the persistent recycling of inaccurate information. Salinger remains, astonishingly, an enigma. The complex and contradictory human being behind the myth has never been revealed.

No longer.

In the eight years since Salinger was begun, and especially in the three years since Salinger’s death, the authors interviewed on five continents more than 200 people, many of whom had previously refused to go on the record about their relationship with Salinger. This oral biography offers direct eyewitness accounts from Salinger’s World War II brothers-in-arms, his family members, his close friends, his lovers, his classmates, his neighbors, his editors, his publishers, his New Yorker colleagues, and people with whom he had relationships that were secret even to his own family. Shields and Salerno illuminate most brightly the last fifty-six years of Salinger’s life: a period that, until now, had remained completely dark to biographers. Provided unprecedented access to never-before-published photographs (more than 100 throughout the book), diaries, letters, legal records, and secret documents, readers will feel they have, for the first time, gotten beyond Salinger’s meticulously built-up wall. The result is the definitive portrait of one of the most fascinating figures of the twentieth century.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Literature, Biography Memoir, Literary Criticism, Audiobook

700 pages, Hardcover

First published September 3, 2013

About the author

David Shields is the author of fourteen books, including Reality Hunger (Knopf, 2010), which was named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications. GQ called it "the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010"; the New York Times called it "a mind-bending manifesto." His previous book, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller. His other books include Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages: A Novel, winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, Yale Review, Believer, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney's, and Utne Reader; he's written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.

Reviews

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Are you under psychiatric care?”
“[…] I’m not a counselor; I’m a fiction writer.”
-JD Salinger

When this book stuck to the facts, it was rather enjoyable, but it should have left the wild speculation and armchair psychology to the internet sleuths and tabloids.

One of my favorite stories involves JD Salinger’s college education. In September 1938, Salinger enrolled in Ursinus College. While Salinger was earning decent grades, he said, “I’m not satisfied. This is not what I want…Charlie, I have to be a writer. I have to. Going here is not going to help me.” He wanted to learn to write better, and Ursinus wasn’t going to take him there. Salinger found a program at Columbia that would take him to the next level, and he didn’t return for a second term at Ursinus.

In January, Salinger took 2 courses at Columbia:
1) A poetry course
2) A short story course

Salinger had to take the short story course twice. While taking the short story course the first time, Salinger was “lazy” and “shut off” because of “psychological problems.”

Fun Fact: Salinger and Ernest Hemingway met a few times with Hemingway even providing some feedback on Salinger’s writing.

But then Salinger ends up withdrawing from public life. No worries for the authors of this biography! This is where the biography left the land of reality and entered into the world of creative writing.

Two entire chapters were devoted to Joyce Maynard. Way back in 1972, Maynard is a student at Yale, and on April 23, 1972, New York Magazine featured one of her pieces as its cover story. This spurs JD Salinger to write to her, and a letter writing correspondence ensues. Maynard ends up moving in with Salinger over the summer. In her own words, “The moment I moved in, I could do very little right. He said to me the day I moved in, ‘You’re behaving like a teenager.’”

Yet, Ms. Maynard doesn’t return to Yale in the fall, forfeiting her spot and her scholarship. In 1973, Maynard also publishes a book, Looking Back, with Doubleday. She states, “Worried about Jerry, I decided not to promote the book.”

In March 1973, Salinger and Maynard break up over a disagreement about their future—Salinger doesn’t want to have more children while Maynard does.

After the break-up, Maynard returns to Salinger’s home (the house he shares with his two minor children), and she writes the name of their imagined child in the snow, and she calls Salinger over and over until he says, “Go away. Stop calling me. I have nothing to say to you.”

Almost three decades later, Ms. Maynard is writing a new book about her short relationship with Salinger. At this time, Salinger is in his late 70’s. Maynard ambushes Salinger at his home, showing up unannounced. Yes. That’s right. Maynard attacks a senior citizen at his home, the one place in the world where one should feel unconditionally safe. Sounds like someone needs to write “Boundaries” in her snow.

What is startingly missing is Salinger’s voice, his side. Painting Salinger as responsible for Maynard’s every life disappointment seems overly broad. I sincerely doubt Salinger unenrolled Maynard from Yale. What seems more likely is that Maynard knew her relationship with Salinger was on the rocks, and she wanted to do all she could to salvage it. She knowingly gave up Yale to pursue a relationship less than a year old. Big mistake.

Ms. Maynard should have harnessed her feelings into her literary work, reducing Salinger into just a fleeing memory.

Secondly, the biography mentions Salinger’s third wife, Colleen O’Neil. Readers are told next to nothing about her, and the authors present that Salinger just married her because he was getting old and needed a caregiver. Based on what evidence? Salinger certainly could have hired a nurse. Ethel Nelson, the babysitter, is quoted, “he couldn’t be alone and he couldn’t very well have a nurse or a person taking care of him in there and not be married.” Um……we just read two chapters about Joyce Maynard living with him while not married! Also, double um, when Salinger died, Colleen Salinger, his wife, along with his son became coexecutors of the JD Salinger Literary Trust. That doesn’t sound like “just a caretaker.”

The book states that unpublished Salinger materials will be released starting in 2015 through 2020. That hasn’t happened.

One last grievance—I know. I know—the citations are rubbish. A couple of times throughout the book, it is said that Salinger told Whit Burnett that he carried six chapters of The Catcher in the Rye with him while he served during World War II. However, there is no citation for this “fact.” Some of the citations would be difficult to verify. For example, “JD Salinger, letter to Whit Burnett, 1940.” Great. Where is this letter? Is it at The Firestone Library at Princeton? Tucked away at Harvard? Should a worldwide book hunt be initiated? I have planned an upcoming trip to Princeton, and I wanted to see the original source to see if it says the first six chapters or just six chapters. Personally, I believe the latter to be true as I have seen some of Salinger’s early Holden Caulfield stories that he later used in The Catcher in the Rye (and those stories don’t track with the first six chapters). Gee. It would be nice to have meaningful citations. Sigh.

The Green Light at the End of the Dock (How much I spent):
Hardcover Text – $12 from Abebooks
Audiobook – Audible – 1 credit (Audible Premium Plus Annual – 24 Credits Membership Plan $229.50 or rough $9.56 per credit)

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[Lucy.Goosey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fall of an Idol.

I waited with joyful anticipation for this book, to know more about an author whose primary published work had been an influential book in my early life. I read this book with increasing distaste. Aside from the format, which I thought was a little sloppy and could have been worked to create a functional narrative, the person that 'Salinger' uncovers is a person who had enough to hide that you do not wonder that he guarded his privacy so meanly. If I was that much of a hypocrite, with a distasteful penchant for 14-18 year old virgins, I would also guard my private life, possibly to avoid criminal conviction.

Salinger emerges as a sexist and sexually exploitative man, who grows from a damaged but focused young man to a damaged and lecherous older man who can not accept his own or any one else's character failings. His final marriage seems to work only because he is dependent and in need of care, and so must hold back his caustic cruelty so as to not drive his carer away.

The man who emerges is one who spits on the publishing world, but it was the publishing world that gave him the financial freedom to say that publication is a perversion and destruction of the artist. He eschews 'gold and woman' but has plenty of gold to prop him up, and judging by the intimate revelations of the types of relationships he had, he had plenty of woman as well. Not that he appears to have been able to give much man to any woman. His sexual exploitation of a naive 18 year old girl was particularly sad, he paid so little attention to her physical arousal that she was totally frigid. This didn't stop him repeatedly exploiting her for oral sex in scenarios that were tantamount to rape. Her story was so evocatively related that I had to stop reading for 24 hours because I felt sick that this man who held himself out as a wise man to her could so callously use her and then discard her.

This was a man I had admired. If you want to hold on to your vision of Salinger as Holden Caulfield grown old, don't read this. Salinger comes across as a selfish, mean-spirited bigot who embodied everything he himself said he hated - wealth, pretension, exploitation, phoniness.

I remember that Catcher in the Rye was written by a young man, bursting with artistic impulse. I remember that the writer and the word are not the same. Who Salinger became was a horrible old prick. He started as a young man who didn't know what to do with his feelings. But he couldn't forgive himself for his failings and became instead a stony idol, fixed, unmoving and cut off from the very feelings that gave him the ability to write Catcher.

I do not look forward to the promised publications from 2015 onward - who wants to read the works of an old man with no feeling for others, and only for himself?

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply sad book.

It begins with an enormously sympathetic portrait of Salinger during WWII. Though he was not an infantryman, he was attached to Fourth Division, which suffered some of the worst casualties in the war. He arrived on Utah Beach on D-Day, fought in the flooded hedgerows of Normandy, endured the strange hell of the Hurtgen Forest and survived the Battle of the Bulge. Salinger was an NCO in the Counter Intelligence Corps and not directly involved in combat. He had freedom to move around, gathering intel, makings arrests, interrogating prisoners and civilians. He wasn't on the firing line, but a fox hole is a fox hole. The worst thing he saw came at the very end of the war when he and his CIC cronies went into Kaufering Lager IV, a sub-camp of Dachau, where the sick from neighboring camps were interred. Before the Nazis fled the scene, they herded all the prisoners into barracks and torched them. Those that couldn't move on their own were butchered. Unimaginable horror. Salinger wasn't prepared for this. No one was.

"You walked through a beautiful, manicured German village, and at the end of the road was this camp that looked like hell piled with corpses. For a soldier like Salinger walking into a camp, these was a stillness to it and a craziness to it. You were caught off guard. You weren't psyched for battle. These weren't liberations in the sense of busting down the gates or anything like that. The war was over; you could let down your guard a little. These soldiers basically walked into these horrific situations. Unguarded and unsuspecting, they were walking into an open place. This was like opening up, and falling into, a graveyard."

Salinger wasn't some grunt who walked in and did what he was told and get the hell out. He was a CIC guy. His job was to understand what happened and why, and then pass that information along. He couldn't ignore the madness. He had to get to the bottom of it, and how the hell do you do that? How do you process the insanity of Kaufering IV? It's no wonder that he ended up having a breakdown shortly afterwards.

There's a part of me that feels that Salinger ought to get a pass for having enduring what he did in the service of his country. As a veteran of the military and the son of a combat veteran, I know that experiences like these change a person forever. They constitute a clear delineation in the arc of one's personal narrative: before one became intimate with death and after. Two different people. Salinger would confide more than once, "You never forget the smell of burning bodies." As far as I'm concerned, I understand Salinger’s desire to retreat to his redoubt in the woods of Cornish. Leave the man alone.

But Salinger didn't retreat. He didn't hole up and hide out. He simply moved his operations to a remote location and continued to engage the world with varying degrees of contempt and disdain. Over time his communication became broadcasts: the messages came out on his terms according to his schedule. In wartime, that's called propaganda. His most consistent message was, “No.” Unless you happened to be a very young girl of a certain type. Then the message was quite different. The message was “Come to me.” Some of the girls came. Some of the girls stayed, at least for a little while. When they left (or were asked to leave) Salinger would find a new girl. Even though Salinger kept getting older and the girls stayed the same age. In spite of his so-called renunciation of literary fame, there’s no question he used it to gain access to these young women. It’s creepy. It’s reprehensible. But most of all it’s sad.

Shields and Salerno offer lots of opinions about this that I won’t get into here. The biography is an oral history, a composite of hundreds of voices. It’s an interesting approach, and a very effective one. Life is long. Let the military people comment on Salinger’s wartime years, the publishing people speak about Salinger the writer, etc. Shields and Salerno craft the message they want by shaping and directing the conversation. It’s manipulative, but good art usually is. It makes sense that the book is paired with a documentary because the book reads like one. There’s a lot of overlap in the book, which is partly by design. What’s more compelling than two people making the same point, especially if its controversial? But the conclusions Shields and Salerno draw get repeated over and over again, and there comes a point where the repetitions weaken the case because they’re handled as a fact. My least favorite sections of the book are the two chapters where first Shields and then Salerno abandon the oral history format and explore their own theories. It’s like editing a story collection and putting your own novella in the middle.

The story of Salinger as an artist has no end. It’s been interrupted and an examination of his life helps us understand why that is so, but it doesn’t change the terms of that interruption. If Salinger’s decision not to publish is like a suicide, then Shields and Salerno’s massive biography is the note. A suicide note can illuminate, but it never explains. Until we get our hands on the material Salinger was working on all those years in his alpine enclave, the story is incomplete. But thanks to this book, when that day comes I’ll greet it with far less fanfare.

[Moira]

- yes, I bought this book

- yes, I am reading this book

- yes, I know this makes me a terrible person

- this book really isn't as horrible an act of Great Cultural Desecration as everyone is saying it is (did they not read the Alexander biography?)

- that cover design should win an award

- presumably the one named "Shitty Book, Gorgeous Cover" that the Twilight series cover designer already got

[Kressel Housman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once you get used to the collage style of this book, it turns out to be a page-turning narrative and an exhaustively-researched biography. It includes everything you’d expect in a biography of Salinger – a discussion of his work and critical and popular reactions to it, his famed reclusiveness – but it also covers parts of his life I knew nothing about, such as his service in World War II, the PTSD that informed his work, and his affairs with much younger women. The suicide of fictional Seymour Glass makes so much more sense when you understand Salinger’s own war experiences, which including liberating the concentration camp Dachau. Even more mind-blowing is that he was working on The Catcher in the Rye in the midst of the war. Knowing that put the classic into a whole new light for me. Holden Caulfield’s rage against phoniness was about something much bigger than the awkwardness of coming of age.

The entire book was excellent, but for me, the most gripping sections were about Joyce Maynard, one of Salinger’s young lovers, and the assassins who used The Catcher in the Rye as “inspiration” for their crimes, most notably Mark David Chapman, assassin of John Lennon. But I would be remiss if I did not explain the collage style that I opened with. Author David Shields introduced it in his previous book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto. He contends that literature, just like any other art, builds on what came before it, so he quotes whole cloth from many different sources and pieces them altogether into one big collage. It looks something like this:

MARGARET SALINGER: My Dad told me, “You never forget the smell of burnt flesh.”

PAUL FITZGERALD (army buddy of Salinger’s): Jerry was a really great guy, but the war took a toll on all of us.

WILLIAM SHIRER (historian): quote from his book illustrating the experience of soldiers in World War II

J.D. SALINGER: quote from one of his stories about the hells of war

DAVID SHIELDS: makes his own observation

When I first began the book, I thought David Shields and his co-author Shane Salerno had interviewed all the people being quoted, but when I saw the name William L. Shirer, having read Reality Hunger, I understood it was a direct quote from a written source. In the standard style, such a thing would be footnoted, but Shields opposes the standard style. Legally, however, he is required to cite all sources, so the endnotes to this book are quite extensive – about 150 pages long. The thickness of this book is bound to intimidate, so I hope knowing that takes away some of the fear.

Every fan of The Catcher in the Rye – and there are millions of them – should read this book. Familiarity with Salinger’s other published work is also essential, but there isn’t much of it, so that shouldn’t take long. It’s not the most flattering portrait – Salinger was definitely a flawed human being – but he was also one of the 20th century’s most influential and talented writers who lived an interesting, if checkered, life.

[Matthew Picchietti · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated the format of this book. I only made it through 92 pages before announcing an official time of death. I returned the book. It's the first time I've ever done that. I'm even more pissed because, despite the obnoxious layout, there was good information, but I did not have the patience to fight my way through that literary mess that is being sold for 37.50. Brutal.

[Roger K. Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

The biography has received indifferent to lousy reviews but I found it compulsively readable. It is not a conventional biography, more like a series of conversations with people who knew him. It has made me think much less of him and of his writing, except for “Catcher in the Rye.” I think it probably helps to be male, especially an adolescent, to like that novel, but there must be a lot of female readers among the 65 million copies sold worldwide. Indeed, some of the importunate fanatics who used to lurk around Salinger’s N.H. house were girls and women (whom, in a way, he preyed upon, esp. nubile girls). “Catcher” seems to strike a chord in the youthful breast about what a crappy world this is. This biography says “Catcher” is actually a metaphor for Salinger’s horrible experiences in the Army in World War II. The novel transfers all the war trauma, anger, fear, anxiety, disgust, horror, etc., that he experienced into the truculent rebellion of a Salinger-like teenager. I never thought of it that way before, but it makes a lot of sense. Salinger really had several VERY VERY BAD months in combat. He was in the first wave on D-Day on Utah Beach right through to liberating a German death camp almost a year later. His strange reclusive existence for 50 years is well described as well as his prickly sense of privacy. There are dozens of fascinating anecdotes, one of my favorites being about the only film that was made from one of his writings, “My Foolish Heart,” in 1949, based on Salinger’s short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.” The movie, which I have seen, is almost nothing like the story. That angered Salinger so much that he never sold another work to Hollywood, though he had many, many offers. This bio Salinger turned down offers of as much as 10 million dollars for the rights to “Catcher in the Rye.” He died a few years back and I imagine that eventually his son and daughter will sell the rights. Too bad, because if there is one American novel that is not translatable to the screen it is “Catcher in the Rye.”

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, what a disappointment. This makes the third biography of Salinger that I've slogged through, and they've all been quite staggeringly lame (well, in fairness, the Alexander one was merely lame, but Hamilton's stunk on ice; and now this thing...yikes!). Even though I generally make it a policy to only rate/comment on books that I've read in their entirety, I admittedly skimmed (or skipped) large portions of this one. But I still feel the need to rag on this opus...or "global cultural event." lol

Say what you will, Messrs Barnum & Bailey...er, Shields & Salerno are definitely masters of hype. Of course, I might be willing to ascribe that trait to their publisher rather than them, except for the way that they both carry on and cavort throughout the book. A tome which is (for so the cover informs me) the "OFFICIAL BOOK OF THE ACCLAIMED DOCUMENTARY FILM" (a film that rates a 5.7 the last time I checked on imdb.com...apparently acclaim just ain't what it used to be).

Certainly this looks at the outset like it will be an oral biography. But it isn't. Definitely not. The two best oral biogs that I've seen--the ones on Chris Farley and Belushi--feature accounts and opinions from people who actually knew those two guys. Of course, they were both larger-than-life (not to mention larger-than-average) people who lived crazy lives out in public surrounded by a lot of other crazy people as well who were all dying to talk about them. How was such a format likely to fit a subject like Salinger, who of course was the antithesis of an SNL comedian? Very, very badly indeed.

So anyway, the two guys in charge of this project cheat. They bring in a whole host of people who never knew Salinger at all, and who presumably scarcely realized that this was what they would someday be quoted for. So we start out right away in the midst of The Longest Day, hearing from people like Stephen Ambrose about all the hell that Salinger must've been going through. Oh yeah, and FDR even checks in at one point! lol ("Hey Frank, what'd you think of Pearl Harbor?" "Well, I'd have to say that it was a day that will live in infamy." "Can we quote you on that?" "Yeah, sure thing."). This is what apparently gave Salinger his "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," to use the anachronistic phrase which keeps popping up (though I prefer the term "battle fatigue").

Shields and Salerno have a disconcerting habit throughout of quoting themselves when really they are only providing background information. Such comments should've doubtless appeared unattributed (and in italics). They are also both much given to making Unnecessary Stentorian Pronouncements in the midst of things, and love Simplistic Aphorisms as well. Things like, "WWII destroyed the man but made him a great artist; religion provided the comfort he needed as a man but killed his art." Good grief.

Then too there were the annoying and tiresome armchair-psychiatrist snatches (as I said in my review of the Alexander book: "Another guy who can't let the poor old recluse alone (or give him the right to be a recluse) but has to impart other motives to it....The main problem of course is--once again--I can't just read about the life, I've got to listen to some idiot blare his opinions at me"). Oh yeah, and of course the many CliffNotes excerpts (which reach their nadir in the section regarding Nine Stories). It's stuff like that that makes me realize why Salinger became a hermit. Jeez, I practically felt like leaving the book on the seat and running out of the subway myself after wading through that crap! (except that it was a library book, and I didn't want to be fined).

And that Michael Clarkson guy cracked me up. Somebody who sold his story to the New York Times...with the idea that he was helping people (like some Selfless Soul). lol What a bozo.

Still, I did not give this whole mess one star, because there were some worthwhile things to be found amongst the wrack. The photos were cool to see (especially fun was the one of a mustachioed JD in fatigues, cigarette in hand and slyly smiling, looking up for a moment from his work on Catcher), and the many excerpts from his letters, postcards, etc., were interesting. I also enjoyed the quotes from the kids of Cornish...and seeing that Salinger (at least at that point) was fun and energetic and laughed a lot. Not so much reclusive as simply wanting to get away from New Yorker know-it-alls (and who wouldn't?). Best of all I thought were the reminiscences of Jean Miller. Oh yes, and--surprisingly--the chapter (by "SHANE") regarding Catcher was quite readable and good.

So you probably could've concocted a worthy book out of this melange, by organizing it into chapters (with a large photo section in the middle). Include sections excerpting the Salinger letters, along with reminiscences of those who actually knew him, Fitzgerald and Miller and Maynard (although personally I found Joyce a bit princess-y). Something along the lines of H G Wells: Interviews & Recollections (edited by J R Hammond). That would make for a couple hundred pages of considerable interest...instead of 600+ pages of unsupervised sprawl.

[Laura Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never having been blown away by the so-called Great American Classic novel, 'Catcher in the Rye', I have always been extremely curious about it's author. Certainly I had heard bits and pieces about his reclusive behavior, his later refusal to publish any more of his works although he supposedly wrote feverishly every day for years and years, etc. I thought maybe if I learned more about the man, I might better understand or appreciate, 'Catcher'. This biography has been described as a "companion to the documentary film of the same name", and alot of the book reads just like that, short sections with the 'narrator's' name, followed their comments. At times reading these short snippets was annoying, and although very entertaining and informative about the title subject, it was tough to get into a good reading rhythym and truly get lost in the book. I thought a more narrative approach would have made the book more enjoyable to get through, but further into this book, there were longer passages, more in depth stories of encounters, and overall I came away with a positive opinion of the book....the book, not necessarily, the person I was reading about! I went back and reread 'Catcher' after finishing the bio, and even with alot more background knowledge of the author, still feel the same about the novel.
A very intersting section of this book dealt with how two modern day assassins, Mark David Chapmen and John Hinckley, both said they were 'inspired' to do their infamous deeds, after reading the book. If Salinger's time in the military during WWII, witnessing atrocities in the European theatre,(both in battle and in liberating a concentration camp!) weren't enough to have an effect on his mental state, surely knowing his signature character was in part a reason for one beloved musical icon to be killed, and a sitting president to be the target of a failed assassination attempt, could very well have pushed him into retreating from the world.
At the end of this book, we learn that Salinger's estate will begin to release some of his writings beginning in 2015. Will there be another seminal character created? Further adventures of both the Caulfields and the Glasses? Time will tell. I certainly have my curiosity piqued to pleasantly anticipate 'new' material from him.

[Sara (Sbarbine_che_leggono) · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Grazie alle persone che ho incontrato nelle mie futili peregrinazioni sono giunto alla conclusione che un Dio deve esistere. È impossibile che tanti straordinari mostri possano commettere tanti straordinari errori con regolarità, giorno dopo giorno, per puro caso".

Ho trovato la prima parte della biografia veramente interessante, non sapevo né che "Il giovane Holden" fosse (anche) un "romanzo di guerra", né che l'autore - di origini ebraiche tra l'altro - avesse combattuto al fronte durante la seconda guerra mondiale e fosse stato tra i primi ad entrare in un campo di sterminio nazista. Notevole anche la ricostruzione di tutte le storie d'amore del giovane J. D., da Oona O'Neill, alla sospetta spia della Gestapo Sylvia, fino alle ultime ragazzine sedotte dallo scrittore. In ogni caso ho preso sempre tutto con le pinze, in particolare le idiosincrasie e i giudizi di conoscenti amici e donne sull'autore. La parte finale - diciamo da pagina 500 in poi - si sta rivelando un po' più noiosa, perché si sofferma sull'ossessione religiosa del Salinger anziano, quella per il Vedanta. Tuttavia chiarisce assai bene certi passaggi delle sue opere (Franny e Zooey, Alzate l'architrave e Seymour su tutti), e ci conferma che vivere isolati e separarsi dal mondo non è mai la soluzione.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Based on interviews conducted over many years, of people who knew Salinger, this is a very enlightening biography. Before reading it I knew next to nothing about him, other than that he was the author of an iconic book that has become a classic. Not everything I read here casts Salinger in a positive light. He was definitely a flawed and tortured soul but he was also very talented and brilliant, and had lived quite an extraordinary life and had some horrific experiences in WWII. Salinger published his very last bit of writing in 1965 and in the next 45 years of his life he became a recluse and refused to have anything else published. It is believed however that he did not stop writing and that there are completed manuscripts relating to the Glass family of his short stories and the Caulfields.....Holden Caulfield's family. It has been alleged that these writings/novels will be published in the next 5 years. It would be very exciting to have these works of Salingers printed. I for one would definitely be interested in reading them.

[Dovydas Pancerovas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Šiame komentare atskleidžiu didžiausią knygos intrigą: ar Salingeris parašė ką nors po to, kai 1965-aisiais žurnale New Yorker publikavo trumpą istoriją Hapworth ir atsiskyrė nuo visuomenės?

Atsakymas yra taip. Šios knygos autoriai rašo, esą du skirtingi šaltiniai jiems patvirtinę, kad Salingerio seife buvo rastos ir apie 2020-uosius turėtų būti publikuotos tokios istorijos:

1) Dvi knygos (suprantu, romanai ar trumpų istorijų rinkiniai) apie Glassų šeimą. Viena iš tų knygų bus apie Seymoure'ą Glassą, personažą, kuris nusišauna ankstyvajame Salingerio apsakyme „Puiki diena bananžuvėms gaudyti”.

2) Taip pat Antrojo pasaulinio karo meilės istorija, paremta Salingerio patirtimi su pirmąja žmona, – jo pirmoji žmona per Antrąjį pasaulinį karą kolaboravo su SS.

3) Ketvirtoji knyga, kuri turėtų būti išleista, tai – „Rugiuose prie bedugnės” personažo Holdeno Caulfieldo šeimos istorija.

Tie šaltiniai, skaitę rankraščius, tikina, esą visos šios knygos yra šedevrai.

[Steve Lively · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a long-time Salinger fan, I am glad to have finally read through this thorough biography. Regardless of one's opinion of the man, his work, or both, I believe Salerno and Shields present the clearest possible picture of the cryptic and reclusive author. The chronology speaks heavily to the author's apparent battle of PTSD, but it also details some stunning personal-relationship items of which I was unaware. It's terrifically exciting to think that new material is coming as early as this year, but I'm learned since I became a fan not to hold my breath.

[britt_brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jerome David Salinger, “Jerry” to his friends: writer, soldier, fickle lover, famous recluse. Through extensive research, interviews, and letters, Shields and Salerno plummet deep into Salinger’s life, analyzing his works, and speculating on posthumous publication. Like many artists, he was an incredibly flawed human. This absolutely consumed me. (It’s quite a chunkster, so I switched between print and audio).

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Ingenious novel or biography? Hard to tell...."


Wow, am I glad I got the flu and was too uncomfortable to sleep and had to spend 2 days in bed. This book is GENIUS...the narration is perfection (sometimes multiple casts don't work for me, but this one is done brilliantly) and I have always wanted to know more about the man who wrote Catcher in the Rye, as it has so much significance. I know there is a documentary (that I hope will not be overlooked in favor of Anchorman, Spiderman 10 or some such drivel) coming out this fall and I wanted to read the book first, as the only book of JD Salinger's I have read is "Catcher". Now, I want to read everything...and this book suggests that there are 5 completed manuscripts that are going to start being released in 2015. These books are currently in the custody of his son. JD just did not want any more publicity in his lifetime.

He reminds me of a male version of Harper Lee, only he had more than one book in him.

It is an amazing blend of narrative, insights, real letters (never before published) and voices of those who loved the beloved writer who just wanted to be left in peace, but made pilgrimages to his house anyway, just to be blessed or given direction or were his lovers. Mr. Salinger kept saying "I am a fiction writer...I have nothing to offer you" to the many pilgrims. He participated in D Day and lived through WWII....which is an amazing feat in it's self.... But he was obviously shell shocked (or what we would call today PTSD) and just wanted to live a peaceful life and write. He never wanted our adoration.

We get to hear from his first true love, Oona O'Neill, the saucy daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, who married Charlie Chaplain over JD and had 8 kids and flaunted their sexuality in JD's face. (that happens early on in the book, and I shall not reveal more)

We get to hear from the few fans who were able to break through his impenetrable wall-o-silence life and exchanged letters with him or published articles about the reclusive author.

Probably most of the facts could be looked up on Wikipedia, but then you miss the chance of listening to one of the greatest books ever recorded!

Five stars isn't enough for this wonderful audiobook.... I would need a whole constellation of stars to do it right...

BRAVO! This is the best book I have heard in a very long time. Totally captivating. But I have to wonder.... is it a novel (as listed here and other places) or a clever biography. You choose. I could not find the audio book in this section of Amazon, but they have it at Audible. I also could not find it here, in audio version, on Goodreads.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 4 out of 5]

если и писать биографии (особенно таких авторов, которые по-прежнему своими текстами нажимают на наши разнообразные нервы), то, видимо, примерно так - составляя калейдоскопическую картинку из множества разных голосов, стараясь избегать толкований и однозначных выводов (они все равно будут скоропалительными и недостаточно информированными). такой с самого начала, видимо, и лучше было б быть биографии Сэлинджера (а не то, что мы имели; и она, конечно, не отменяет необходимости его читать). на 3/4 авторы подошли к этому больному зубу с тактом и чувством меры, и да - кто вел себя мудацки, тот и выглядит мудаком, кто был нормальным человеком, и рассказывает о Сэлинджере как нормальный человек. сам наш рассматриваемый автор в какой-то момент писал, что не считает ничего зазорного в том, что читатели интересуются жизнью писателя - в этом-де "нет ничего личного". ну, потому что это действительно может оказаться важно для понимания того, что писатель нам хотел сказать (если такова действительно наша цель - понять это). главное - и это труднее всего - постараться и никого при составлении (и чтении) биографии не судить. можно рассуждать об общих вопросах (этических, житейских, любых), какие ставит перед нами предложенная информация. но не более того. и авторам это по большей части удалось везде - за исключением примерно последней четверти и заключения (которое, я подозреваю, и только и прочли газетные рецензенты всего мира). потому что под конец авторы начинают считать Сэлинджера раз и навсегда заданной сущностью, которая за всю свою долгую жизнь ни разу не изменилась (упрекают его в противоречиях, ставят на вид, что он поменял точку зрения, и пр.). это портит впечатление. мы, читатели, повторю, судить его (или кого бы то ни было, если нас при этом не было) не вправе вообще ни за что. мы можем только принимать те или иные данные к сведению. и помнить в данном случае, что все, что Сэлинджер хотел нам сообщить о себе, он сообщил в своих текстах - там можно найти ответы на все эти "почему" да "как". в чем лично я, прочтя эту книжку, убедился. чего и всем желаю

[Patricia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was SO disappointed in this book, I did not finish it. It makes me so sad for my favorite author, who was notoriously private, as this book is a kind of "tell all" that was published after his death so that he cannot dispute anything stated within.

How are we to tell what is true? So many of Salinger's cohorts--lovers, "friends", colleagues and others who never even knew him--seem to have turned on him, telling tales that he would have been mortified to see in print, I'm sure.

Why do this? I believed this book would offer insights to our greatest American author, but instead, it is gossip. In this age of technology, when nothing is private, couldn't we have left the mystic alone? JD wanted nothing more than to write in private--the writing was the thing, the publication just brought unwanted public attention. Who are we to judge?

Shame on these compilers of hearsay. I will go back and reread Salinger's books when I want to know more about him and skip this tabloid which accomplishes nothing but to sully the image of this great writer. Was he a recluse? Yes, so let him be. Don't read the book, read HIS books.

[Jay Sandover · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gets interestingly hijacked for several pages by a mini biography of Oona Chaplin (née O'Neill), abandoned daughter of Eugene O'Neill and debutante for whom Salinger carried a torch for many years. She was well wooed. On her first date with Orson Welles, he read her palm and told her that her love line was long and pointed directly to (himself? Salinger?) Charlie Chaplin. Chaplin was 54 when he married her; she was 18. They had 8 kids.

The Salinger bio is fascinating on many subjects probably least of which is JD Salinger.

[G. Munckel · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Ésta es la historia de un soldado y escritor que escapó de la muerte durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial pero nunca abrazó del todo la supervivencia […]. Ésta es la investigación del proceso por el cual un soldado roto con el alma herida se transformó a sí mismo, por medio de su arte, en un icono del siglo XX y luego, por medio de su religión, destruyó ese arte”.

La mayor parte de esta biografía es un collage de citas y entrevistas a alrededor de doscientas personas. Se lee como un relato coral de ritmo asombroso en el que se van intercalando todas esas voces para tratar de contar la vida de Salinger. Me asombró la organización tan inteligente de ese material.

Empieza con el desembarco en Normandía y lo sigue durante su participación en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, incluyendo el horror de estar entre los primeros en entrar en un campo de concentración, un hecho que quebraría a Salinger para luego convertirlo en un gran escritor. Luego retrocede hasta su juventud en Nueva York y los años de publicaciones en revistas hasta que, por fin, publica El guardián entre el centeno, el libro que lo lanzó a la fama, esa misma fama de la que pasó el resto de su vida tratando de esconderse.

Hasta ahí, me encantó este libro y todas las claves que da para entender mejor la obra de Salinger. Pero luego se ocupa de averiguar lo que hizo durante todos los años que pasó “recluido”. No era, como muchos de los entrevistados parecen creer, un ermitaño; seguía recibiendo y visitando a sus amigos e interactuando con la gente de su pueblo (aunque cada vez menos). Era solo un hombre muy celoso de su privacidad y no quería tener una vida pública. Me sentí asqueado al leer sobre los fotógrafos que lo acosaban, pero también un poco triste por toda esa gente que quería saber más sobre Salinger pero no se molestaba en tratar de entenderlo. También admito que me sentí un poco traidor leyendo este libro, incluso recuerdo que me sentí así antes de comprarlo, pero la contratapa prometía material inédito, incluyendo algunos fragmentos de textos suyos, y me venció la curiosidad.

Me frustró enterarme de la cantidad de cuentos suyos publicados en revistas antes de hacerse famoso y que no se reeditaron (aquí al menos pude leer algunos pasajes). Pero me dejó ansioso saber que siguió escribiendo, que quizás haya más que su novela y sus tres libros de cuentos. Solo espero que no haya que esperar mucho para leer su obra completa.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looks like JD Salinger lucked out by dying before the beginning of the ME TOO era! Seems like he messed around with quite a few young girls as young as 14 years.
The book tells the story of repeated young women, but does not call out our hero directly for his abuse. But he sure does come across easily as a less than respectable human being. Whatever his excuses might be.

I have read all of Salinger‘s published work and during my first year at the University of Michigan I spent a lot of time at the undergraduate library looking up his stories, published in magazines in the 1940s. I think I understood his stories in the Saturday evening Post a lot more than I understood his later stories about the Glass family! I wrote at least one paper about him in college, but it has gratefully not survived.

I have a pretty good stack of the many books that have been written about Salinger, and that I referred to in this book. There is some controversy about the accuracy of much that has been written about this American idol. This book claims to have had access to new material and with the effort of many years and 200 interviews to have gotten to the real JD Salinger. The book covers in some detail his experience in World War II. It ends by basically summarizing 10 issues which the author feels are major aspects of the writers life that made him the man and author that he was.

The author went pretty far in convincing me that he is the writer who has finally gotten the story of JD Salinger right. He made a pretty plausible argument for his point of you in my opinion. Although I drifted pretty far a field from JD Salinger, after the initial flurry, I had soaked in a lot of information about him over the years and reading this book put a lot of details together in a way that made sense to me.

One plays the author seems to have fallen short is what would happen once the famous writer died. What about all those books that were going to be published shortly after his death? He gave a few ideas about what the books would be that would come out post Mortem. So far 13 years after his death nada!

[Carol Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've never been a totally devoted fan of J.D. Salinger, if you want to know the truth. But these guys, David Shields and his buddy, old Salerno, they do a great job of talking with all kinds of crazy people who knew Salinger before he became a great writer. They tell how he started out like a scared mama's boy, and then he was in the war, and then he got famous. Then he ran away and stopped writing because he hated being famous, and people wanting his autograph and all. Then he became this horrible creepy madman, hiding out in the woods with these armies of mindless twelve year old girls, doing his bidding and all.

What got to me about this book was how everyone wanted to make old Salinger look good, like he was some kind of a crazy war hero. And he saw things and lost all interest in money, fame, women, and was some kind of saint. But I didn't buy it, if you want to know the truth. I have the impression Salinger was raised Catholic, by a crazy mother, and his horror of sex and fear of women and his loathing for adult sexuality was pretty much baked in before he ever saw combat in WWII. For some reason the authors have nothing to say about his childhood. It felt like a coverup, it really did. I mean like nobody's talking.

But you know who is talking? A bunch of god-damned movie stars, that's who. Mental titans like John Cusack, Jake Gyllenhall, and Edward Norton. They say Salinger knocks them out. They say he's a genius. And boy, they would know, wouldn't they?

Movie stars give me a pain. They really do.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for research for the Salinger essay I just published. The problem with this book -- and it's a minor one, but one that still nettles me -- is not the quirky oral history-style formatting, which I very much appreciated. The problem is not Shane Salerno, who seems to me the only one of the two authors who is trying to be relatively fair to Salinger (despite being a fan). It's the ever nauseating David Shields, who intrudes at several points in this otherwise interesting book to offer an extended second-person monologue that is outright cringey, as well as to display an overbearing misogyny towards the likes of Joyce Maynard and Margaret Salinger. There are a lot of great quotes and I didn't mind the extended dives into World War II, Oona O'Neill, or even some of the attempts to photograph Salinger over the years. But I DID very much mind Shields, who is truly one of the worst and most insufferable goddamned people in the publishing industry. On the other hand, given how similar the format here is to Shields's more recent nonfiction books, I suspect he was ALSO an instrumental part of devising this book's otherwise fascinating structure.

[Болор Туяа · Rating 3 out of 5]

#J.D.Salinger хоёр ч намтар ном уншиж байна. Энд миний хийх зүйлтэй хамаагүй ч хүмүүст сонин байж таарах зөндөө юм байнаа.
Олон жил үерхсэн найз охин нь #charliechaplin тай гэрлэсэн. 30хэдэн насны зөрүүтэй байсанч 8хүүхэдтэй болж үхэн үхтлээ хамт амьдарсан байх юм.
Дэлхийн 2 дайнд өнгөрүүлсэн жилүүд насанд туршид нь мартагдаагүй, зохиол бүтээлд нь үргэлж дахин дахин амилж байсан гэх мэт. Өөрөө хагас еврей, еврэй нарын хомроглон устгаж байсан газарт очоод хүний махны шарсан үнэр хамраас нь хэзээч арилаагүй гэх мэт.
Бас зохиолы нь уншсан гаж донтон 3нь ч хүн аллага хийсэн, шалтгааныг нь энэ номонд тайлбар бий гэж хэлсэн гэнэ. Нэг алуурчин #johnlennon ий алуурчин байсан гэвэл итгэх үү? 😳😮 Энэ зохиолч 91наслахдаа 3гэрлэж, дайнд оролцож одоо хүртэл жил бүр сая хувь зарагддаг ном бичиж ёстой нэг амьдарсан шиг амьдаржээ.

Хар номы нь @bookloversinmongolia санал болгосон сайтаас татаж авсан 🤩

[Ion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Minunata carte. Unul din autori (Shane Salerno) este și regizorul documentarului ”Salinger”.
P.S. Dar unde sunt manuscrisele din sertar?

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Maybe this will trend ; a book=bio accompanied by a simultaneous film=doc release. There's good reason for it ; some things come across better as picture, like pictures. And recently people have been dying of whom plenty of filmic material exists ; some will have their bio's written. So I'm saying, despite my long=standing irrational aversion to (and simultaneous immersion in) filmic media, there seems to be material reason to do this kind of thing.

What I learned? That Holden shot, not only the Pope, but Reagan too. And probably some other folks. Seriously. It's what happens when a reader id's too much with a narrator. In this case, a narrator all too full of himself who thinks no one else can cut it, quite. They're all phoney. And so, some nut=job reader of course swallows this whole thing about how undesirable phoney people are and goes out and like shoots a Pope and a Reagan. I don't know if the extreme=right lean of either target had anything to do with it. But books in certain hands can be dangerous. [although maybe it was that Beatle Lennon and not the Pope ; same thing.... but this is what happens when I want to write what I want to write rather than writing, you know, after a bit of research because, there's that thing right there on wikipedia which says Several shootings have been associated with Salinger's novel, including Robert John Bardo's shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer and John Hinckley, Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. After the killing of John Lennon, Mark David Chapman was arrested with a copy of the book that he had purchased that same day, inside of which he had written: "To Holden Caulfield, From Holden Caulfield, This is my statement". I guess I don't know Rebecca Schaeffer, but damn! that sucks what happened. ....and then that wiki blurb points me to a Salon article, When books kill. ]

Here's Steve Taylor's song about what the Pope did after he was shot ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsvA-...

Here's Suicidal Tendencies' song about shooting Reagan ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLcnF...

There's probably something somewhere about people having fantasies of shooting Holden.

[Олег Шинкаренко · Rating 5 out of 5]

Дочитав біографію Селінджера Девіда Шилдса, які він писав вісім років в режимі детективного розслідування. Судячи з усього, до самої смерті у 91 рік Селіджер уявляв себе 17-річним підлітком Голденом Колфілдом. Саме тому він міг зустрічатися тільки із 15-17-річними дівчатами. Оскільки він жив замкнено, то він знаходив цих дівчат на обкладинках журналів і у телесеріалах. Дівчата від 19 років і старші йому подобалися вже не дуже, тому їх треба було час від часу міняти.
Селінджер був не дуже розумною людиною, бо захоплювався по черзі гомеопатією, уринотерапією, дзен-буддизмом, діанетикою, саєнтологією і всім підряд. Але він не ставився до цього надто серйозно: просто час від часу пив власну сечу та медитував. Він не міг зрозуміти, що у свої 53 роки не викликає еротичного збудження у 18-річної студентки Джойс Мейнард, і саме цим пояснюється труднощі у сексуальних стосунках між ними. Селінджер думав, що дівчина хвора і намагався водити Мейнард до гомеопатів. Цікаво, що сама Джойс довго переслідувала письменника вже після того, як ій виповнилося 19 років, і вона перестала його цікавити. У 43 роки Мейнард продала декілька листів Селінджера на аукціоні за 80 тисяч доларів.

[Greg]

$5 from a sale table.
I lost interest. I read two-thirds of it, enough to convince me I'm not interested in knowing more about Salinger the man, not to confuse the man with his writing. Salinger would be the last reclusive writer I would want to try and find. I don't think I want to read any more, he's just not that interesting as a person. Salinger is a contradiction in many ways.
This biography is a good reference work on Salinger's background and his war years in counter-intelligence in Europe in WWII.
I lost interest in Salinger at Chapter nine
THE ORIGIN OF ESME
Salinger meets a fourteen-year old girl, Jean Miller, and over the next five years corresponds with her, dates her, and seduces her. The same pattern recurs throughout his life: innocence admired, innocence seduced, innocence abandoned. Salinger is obsessed with girls at the edge of their bloom. He wants to help them bloom, then blames them for blooming.

This biography can be approached not necessarily lineally but in sections that make it a good reference work.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

The content of this work is fantastic. The book is replete with new information, uncovered letters, several new photos, new interviews. I was not fond of the way the book was formatted, as if the entire manuscript was one long interview with hundreds of people (minus questions, only their answers). This made the seem disjointed and interrupted the flow of any semblance of narrative the work may have had.

The research for the work was phenomenal. This will be the definitive biographical account of the life of J.D. Salinger for a very long time. For that alone, the book is worth reading.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, the book isn't really 700 pages, about 130 are footnotes, citations and character charts, coupled with the pictures and formatting this book is not a chore to read at all. I like how the biography inserted his own quotes and thought regarding Salinger. For me reading this book, elevated The Catcher in the Rye. Read it and then watch the documentary. Worth the time and effort.

[Martijn van Bruggen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zojuist dan eindelijk de de biografie van Jerome David Salinger (1918-2010) uitgelezen. Een biografie die beter te typeren valt als een reconstructie, doordat Salinger zich al sinds zijn twintiger jaren steeds meer afzonderde van de maatschappij.

Zoals miljoenen lezers over de hele wereld werd ook ik erg gegrepen door zijn in 1951 uitgegeven (enige) roman The catcher in the rye. Het blijkt dat de Tweede Wereldoorlog een grote invloed heeft gehad bij de totstandkoming van deze klassieker. Salinger had de eerste hoofdstukken al bij zich, toen hij op D-day (!) aan zijn eerste dag als soldaat voor het Amerikaanse leger begon. Salinger maakte naast D-day nog vele andere verschrikkelijke slagen mee, terwijl hij in de minuten van betrekkelijke rust meteen weer begon met schrijven.

Hoewel Salinger na terugkomst in Amerika bijna niet wilde praten over zijn verschrikkelijke belevenissen, waaronder de ontdekking van vernietigingskamp Kaufering IV, lezen we op pagina 158 dat hij tegen zijn vriendin Jean Miller zegt: "You never forget the smell of burning flesh."

De oorlog maakte Salinger kapot als mens, maar voltooide hem als schrijver, met als ultiem voorbeeld het breekbare, verontwaardigde, wanhopige The catcher in the rye. Lof alom, Salinger was definitief een grote schrijver.

Maar kapot als mens bleef hij. Hij trok zich terug in een bos in Cornish, waar hij steeds ouder werd maar wel tienermeisjes bleef benaderen omdat zij in zijn ogen nog puur waren en niet verpest door volwassenheid. Hij maakte ze één voor één mentaal beschadigd doordat ze moesten voldoen aan het ideaalbeeld van de jongvolwassene dat beschreven wordt in The catcher in the rye . Zelfs zijn dochter verwerpt hem, omdat hij zo kil en egoïstisch was.

In Cornish publiceerde hij nog wel wat werken, daarna al snel niets meer. Hij verdiepte zich in religie om zingeving te vinden, om te overleven als mens. Het weinige dat nog van hem uitkwam werd zeer slecht ontvangen, omdat het pure propaganda was van de godsdienst die hij aanhing. Als mens overleefde hij, als schrijver ging hij kapot.

In de reviews op Goodreads schrijven veel mensen dat ze deze biografie nooit hadden willen lezen, omdat het de legende van Salinger kapotmaakt. Hij is zelf net zo'n 'phony' volwassene als de personen die hij in de Catcher verwerpt. Deze mensen begrijpen niet dat je alleen een boek als The Catcher in the rye kan schrijven als je óók die phony eigenschappen bezit. Je kan alleen de medaille beschrijven als je hem van twee kanten kent. Dus ik zal de Catcher blijven lezen en kan hem aan iedereen aanraden, net als deze biografie, die van een mythe een mens maakt.