- Person
- J. D. Salinger
- Lived
- 1919–2010
- Field
- Novelist
- From
- American
The story
J. D. Salinger was born in Manhattan on 1 January 1919. His father, Sol Salinger, came from a family of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and Sol's father had been the rabbi of Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Louisville, Kentucky. Salinger had his bar mitzvah as a boy and later attended Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. By 1941 he was publishing stories in magazines such as Esquire and Collier's.
In early 1942, a few months after the United States entered the Second World War, he was drafted into the army. For about two years he moved between training bases in the United States, describing army life in letters with a mixture of bemusement and boredom. In March 1944 his unit was shipped to Tiverton in Devon to prepare for the invasion of Normandy.
He served as a counterintelligence soldier with the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, and on D-Day, 6 June 1944, he was at Utah Beach. That autumn he fought in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest, an 88-day struggle that was the longest battle fought on German soil in the war, and that winter in the Battle of the Bulge. His daughter later wrote that the few men who survived the fighting around Mortain in Normandy were left with much to sicken them. Salinger reached the rank of staff sergeant and served in five campaigns.
He kept writing throughout. In England before D-Day he completed six chapters of a novel about a character named Holden Caulfield, and during his service he continued to publish stories in national magazines. His time in Devon later inspired "For Esmé, with Love and Squalor", in which an American sergeant training for intelligence work before D-Day meets a remarkable English girl. His biographer Kenneth Slawenski calls it widely considered one of the finest literary works to come out of the Second World War.
Despite the horrors he witnessed, Salinger remained proud of his service. His daughter recalled that he kept his military haircut and his service jacket and drove around town in an old Jeep.
Why it matters
Salinger was among the soldiers who helped liberate Europe from Nazi rule, and he carried that experience into some of America's most enduring fiction.
About J. D. Salinger
Author of The Catcher in the Rye, whose voice of adolescent alienation spoke for generations of readers, before he withdrew from public life for more than half a century.
More about J. D. Salinger
- J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye still sells worldwideJ. D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye has been translated into 30 languages and, according to The Guardian, has sold more than 65 million copies.
- J. D. Salinger served as a counterintelligence agentJ. D. Salinger used his French and German as an army counterintelligence agent, interrogating prisoners of war and later serving on denazification duty in Germany.
Sources
- J. D. Salinger Wikipedia
- J.D. Salinger Jewish Virtual Library
- JD Salinger obituary The Guardian
- For Esmé, with Love and Squalor Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.