J. D. Salinger

J. D. Salinger was born in 1919 in New York City. After graduating high school in 1936, Salinger matriculated into New York University but dropped out in his first year. In 1938, he briefly attended Ursinus College in Pennsylvania before dropping out again. Finally, in 1939, he matriculated into Columbia University, where he studied fiction writing. In 1942, the U.S. Army drafted Salinger. He participated in the Normandy landings (D-Day), the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge), and the liberation of the concentration camp Dachau. After the war, he was briefly hospitalized for what was called “combat stress reaction” at the time, indicating the toll his military experiences took on him. He published his acclaimed story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” in The New Yorker in 1948. This story introduced his readers to the Glass family, who appeared in more than half a dozen subsequent Salinger works, including Franny and Zooey. In 1951, Salinger published his first novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which became a controversial bestseller. Though he continued to publish works such as Nine Stories (1953) and Franny and Zooey (1961), he moved to a small town in New Hampshire and became famously reclusive. He died in 2010.