J.D. Salinger

Author profile

born

in Manhattan, New York, The United States

January 01, 1919

died

January 27, 2010

gender

male

genre

Literature & Fiction, Short Stories

influences

Sherwood Anderson, Anton Chekhov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gustave Flauber ...more

About this author

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Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, espe...more Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.

The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed. He made headlines around the globe in June 2009, after filing a lawsuit against another writer for copyright infringement resulting from that writer's use of one of Salinger's characters from The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.
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Average rating: 3.80 · 1,285,771 ratings · 30,686 reviews · 37 distinct works · Similar authors

	The Catcher in the Rye 3.76 of 5 stars 3.76 avg rating — 1,097,900 ratings — published 1951 — 267 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Franny and Zooey 3.98 of 5 stars 3.98 avg rating — 91,028 ratings — published 1961 — 78 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Nine Stories 4.19 of 5 stars 4.19 avg rating — 67,691 ratings — published 1953 — 90 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction 4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 avg rating — 23,186 ratings — published 1955 — 48 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Perfect Day for Bananafish 4.39 of 5 stars 4.39 avg rating — 2,162 ratings — published 1948 — 6 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	جنگل واژگون by J.D. Salinger, بابک تبرایی (Translator), سحر ساعی (Translator) 3.57 of 5 stars 3.57 avg rating — 829 ratings — published 1947 — 3 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hapworth 16, 1924 3.75 of 5 stars 3.75 avg rating — 428 ratings — published 1965 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	22 Stories 4.34 of 5 stars 4.34 avg rating — 367 ratings — published 1974 — 5 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	هفته‌ای یه بار آدمو نمی‌کشه by J.D. Salinger, امید نیک‌فرجام (Translator), لیلا نصیری‌ها (Translator) 3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 avg rating — 324 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	یادداشت‌های شخصیِ یک سرباز by J.D. Salinger, علی شیعه‌علی (Translator) 3.42 of 5 stars 3.42 avg rating — 277 ratings — published 2008 — 2 editions	Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by J.D. Salinger…

Quotes by J.D. Salinger

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

tags: authors, books, literature, reading, writing

9,029 people liked it

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

tags: salinger, stories

2,382 people liked it

“I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

1,880 people liked it

See all J.D. Salinger's quotes »

Polls

Sometimes the first line of a book just grabs you by the nostrils and drags your fool head into its pages, preventing escape in any way, shape or form. Which of these opening lines has its phalanges most firmly planted in your nasal cavities?

"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

345 votes, 5.4%

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

339 votes, 5.3%

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

331 votes, 5.2%

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."

Scaramouche by Raphael Sabatini

293 votes, 4.6%

"It was a pleasure to burn."

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

268 votes, 4.2%

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

268 votes, 4.2%

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

249 votes, 3.9%

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

209 votes, 3.3%

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

The Hobbit: Or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien

209 votes, 3.3%

"All children, except one, grow up."

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

183 votes, 2.9%

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

180 votes, 2.8%

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

178 votes, 2.8%

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

1984 by George Orwell

178 votes, 2.8%

Bah! Foolish poll-maker-person! The nostril seizing power of these paltry lines is minimal, at best! Look to the comments section where I shall carefully type out my choice, which you have so imprudently omitted!

161 votes, 2.5%

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

160 votes, 2.5%

"All this happened, more or less."

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

159 votes, 2.5%

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

152 votes, 2.4%

"As Gregor Samsa awoke from a night of uneasy dreaming, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

152 votes, 2.4%

"He— for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it— was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters."

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

146 votes, 2.3%

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

145 votes, 2.3%

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

142 votes, 2.2%

“'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'”

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

131 votes, 2.0%

"Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women."

Middle Passage by Charles Johnson

128 votes, 2.0%

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler

128 votes, 2.0%

"Mother died today."

The Stranger by Albert Camus

121 votes, 1.9%

"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

109 votes, 1.7%

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

Neuromancer by William Gibson

108 votes, 1.7%

"I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man."

Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

103 votes, 1.6%

"Call me Ishmael."

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

93 votes, 1.5%

“'When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets,' Papa would say, 'she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.'”

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

83 votes, 1.3%

"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

82 votes, 1.3%

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Murphy by Samuel Beckett

80 votes, 1.2%

"There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim and we sat in the Korova milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening."

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

74 votes, 1.2%

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

72 votes, 1.1%

"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up."

The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton

68 votes, 1.1%

"For a long time, I went to bed early."

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

62 votes, 1.0%

"Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden."

The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace

62 votes, 1.0%

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

59 votes, 0.9%

"Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation."

Alphabetical Africa by Walter Abish

51 votes, 0.8%

"When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere."

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

51 votes, 0.8%

"I have never begun a novel with more misgiving."

The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

38 votes, 0.6%

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Paul Clifford by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

35 votes, 0.5%

"Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing."

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

31 votes, 0.5%

"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature."

The Debut by Anita Brookner

28 votes, 0.4%

"The moment one learns English, complications set in."

Chromos by Felipe Alfau

27 votes, 0.4%

"My lady and I are being shut up in a tower for seven years"

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

25 votes, 0.4%

"'Barabbas came to us by sea', the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

25 votes, 0.4%

"Of Herbert West, who was my friend in college and in after life, I can speak only with extreme terror."

Herbert West: Reanimator and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft

23 votes, 0.4%

"When I was three and Bailey was four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed - 'To Whom It May Concern' - that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson."

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

21 votes, 0.3%

"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu."

Waiting by Ha Jin

20 votes, 0.3%

"What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings?"

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things by Gilbert Sorrentino

16 votes, 0.2%

6401 total votes

188 comments

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