Product Overview
One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, author of the classic Catcher in the Rye,J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography that Peter Ackroyd in The Times of London calls energetic and magnificently researcheda book from which a true picture of Salinger emerges. Filled with new information and revelationsgarnered from countless interviews, letters, and public recordsJ. D. Salinger presents an extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century.
Kenneth Slawenski explores Salingers privileged youth, long obscured by misrepresentation and rumor, revealing the brilliant, sarcastic, vulnerable son of a disapproving father and doting mother and his entrance into a social world where Gloria Vanderbilt dismissively referred to him as a Jewish boy from New York. Here too are accounts of Salingers first broken heartEugene ONeills daughter, Oona, left him for the much older Charlie Chaplinand the devastating World War II service (a living hell) of which he never spoke and which haunted him forever.
J. D. Salinger features all the dazzle of this authors early writing successes, his dramatic encounters with luminaries from Ernest Hemingway to Laurence Olivier to Elia Kazan, his surprising office intrigues with famous New Yorker editors and writers, and the stunning triumph of The Catcher in the Rye, which would both make him world-famous and hasten his retreat into the hills of New Hampshire.
Whether its revealing the facts of his hasty, short-lived first marriage or his lifelong commitment to Eastern religion, which would dictate his attitudes toward sex, nutrition, solitude, and creativity, J. D. Salinger is this unique authors unforgettable story in fullone that no lover of literature can afford to miss.
