J.D. Salinger, a celebrated author and enigmatic recluse whose 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” became an enduring anthem of adolescent angst and youthful rebellion and a classic of 20th-century American literature, died Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H. He was 91.
The author’s son, in a statement from the author’s literary representative, confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
To generations of men and women in the years after World War II, “The Catcher in the Rye” was the singular, tell-it-like-it-is story about the mind-set of a sensitive youth: cynical yet romantic; disdainful of hypocrisy, social convention and conformity; self-conscious and uncomfortable in his own skin; confused and pathetic but also lovable.
The novel is about the adventures and misadventures of a disillusioned 16-year-old who knows he is about to be expelled from his boarding school, Pencey Prep, and decides to run away instead. Over three days in New York City, he has a run of weird encounters with taxi drivers, nuns, an elevator man, three girls from Seattle, a prostitute and a former teacher. In his eyes, the world is controlled and dominated by “phonies,” whom he cannot abide, and he struggles with limited success to come to terms with love, sex and, ultimately, himself. In an encounter with his kid sister, Phoebe, he finds affection and salvation.
In the more than half-century since the novel’s publication, its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has joined the ranks of such literary legends as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as a folk hero of American fiction, with near-universal name recognition.
“The Catcher in the Rye” could have made Salinger a national celebrity, but he detested the public spotlight and, not long after the book appeared, withdrew to the hills of rural New Hampshire, where he lived in seclusion. He shunned contact with the media and the public and filed lawsuits to block publication or quotes from his personal letters.
He continued writing, but not since a short story appeared in the New Yorker in 1965 has any new writing of Salinger’s been published. Earlier, the New Yorker had published J.D. Salinger short stories, but to the majority of the reading public he was known only as the author of “The Catcher in the Rye.”
In 1953, Salinger settled in Cornish, where he lived in a hilltop cottage overlooking the Connecticut River, jealously guarding his privacy.
Jerome David Salinger was born in New York, the son of a Jewish cheese importer and a Scotch-Irish mother. He grew up in Manhattan. In 1934, his father enrolled him at Valley Forge Military Academy, a Pennsylvania boarding school said to be the model for Pencey Prep in “Catcher in the Rye.”
After two stabs at college, he took a class on short-story writing at Columbia University. In Story magazine, Salinger published his first story, “The Young Folks,” in spring 1940. That encouraged him to continue writing.
During World War II, he served in the Army. Because he could speak German, he interrogated prisoners of war. He participated in the Normandy campaign and the liberation of France and at one point was hospitalized for combat-related stress.
While in the Army, Salinger married a young former member of the Nazi party named Sylvia. They were divorced shortly thereafter, and in later years he referred to her only as “Saliva.”
In 1948, Salinger achieved a measure of literary recognition with the publication in the New Yorker of three stories that would later be included in the collection “Nine Stories.”
In 1955, Salinger married Claire Douglas, the daughter of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas. They had two children, Margaret Ann and Matthew. In 1967, they divorced. Later, Salinger married a nurse several decades younger than he, Colleen O’Neill, who was said to have been friendly to neighbors and active in their rural community.
