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J. D. Salinger: A Life Hardcover – January 25, 2011

by Kenneth Slawenski (Author)

97 customer reviews

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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 researched”—a book from which “a true picture of Salinger emerges.” Filled with new information and revelations—garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records—J. D. Salinger presents an extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century.

Kenneth Slawenski explores Salinger’s 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 Salinger’s first broken heart—Eugene O’Neill’s daughter, Oona, left him for the much older Charlie Chaplin—and 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 author’s 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 it’s 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 author’s unforgettable story in full—one that no lover of literature can afford to miss.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 450 pages
Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400069513
ISBN-13: 978-1400069514
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.4 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (97 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #447,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2639 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Authors
- #4500 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > United States
- #19608 in Books > History > Americas > United States

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Customer Reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars

5 star		36%
4 star		33%
3 star		20%
2 star		5%
1 star		6%

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34 of 41 people found the following review helpful

Finally, all the David Copperfield

By Aceto TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on January 14, 2011

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

After the last two flops a decade and two ago on old J.D., about the last thing I wanted to do was read another quasi biography. I mean he having been the great author of my adolescence and all. But his recent death stirred the pot, and so little about him is written in the three dozen or so books I have on the The New Yorker & family, that I let myself take heart from a biographer and scholar I trust, Peter Ackroyd, and give it a try. Right choice.

Salinger's youth and family history are given just enough space without tealeaves or preciousness. Mr. Slawenski tours the events, relationships and circumstances without exaggerating or imagining the importance of every godam fact he bumps into. Although the Oona O'Neill episode was a real eye-opener.

I was especially suspicious of "Salinger a Life" coming out so soon after Salinger's death. But he had already been deep in research some eight years before. He even started a website "DeadCaulfields.com" back in 2004. This guy is no slouch and no ambulance chaser. I forgot my fears by the time Salinger failed out of prep school. Mr. Slawenski met my first challenge, Salinger's education and early influences, with neither speculation nor dalliance.

The second was his war years. After the military academy, I never thought Salinger would join the Army as an enlisted man. Yet that is just what he attempted. Because of its positioning in the book, I must pause here to show how truly tricky Salinger was. Mr. Slawenski refers to a story from about this time "The Long Debut of Lois Taggett", one of the stories rejected by The New Yorker. He remarks that it contained "many oddities (Lois's husband, for example, suffers from a bizarre allergy to colored socks)," Turns out the allergy is not so bizarre.Read more ›

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96 of 108 people found the following review helpful

Fascinating!

By P. B. Sharp TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on January 2, 2011

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

Kenneth Slawenski has almost absorbed JD Salinger by osmosis, the writer becoming part of his breathing out and breathing in. Slawenski's understanding of Salinger is basic, almost on the chromosome level as though he had incorporated Salinger into his genes so that the two of them- biographer and writer - are twin souls. However, Slawenski says in the introduction that when Salinger died in January 2010, he did not mourn, but gave him a salute. It took Slawenski seven years to write this biography and it can be said to be the horse's mouth as far as Jerome David Salinger is concerned.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the chapters on World War II. Salinger had enlisted and eventually became a sergeant and this young man from a posh address in New York City stormed the Normandy Beach on D - Day and then spent unspeakable days and nights slogging through mud, crouching in fox holes with the snow coming down on his head but actually taking time when he could to write even in a fox hole. He saw the liberation of Paris but went right back in the fox holes crawling step by step fox hole to fox hole toward Berlin and the Battle of the Bulge. He managed to sneak under darkness into Hemingway's camp as the author was on location as a war correspondent.

And all the while, once even when crouching under a table with his typewriter, trying to avoid mortar shells, Salinger wrote. The war forged his writing and his soul and he was never again the same debonair, rather heedless young man he once was. Slawenski says that Salinger was not writing out of patriotism or with approval of Allied commanders' policies. He was writing for and about the boy next to him and these boys died by the thousands. The war was a baptism in fire.Read more ›

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

A biographer who almost "catches" his subject

By Robert Morris HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on November 22, 2012

Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )

This is one of two biographies made available via the Vine program that I recently read. The other is Robert Massie's Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. They have been widely reviewed and generally praised. I realize that my reviews of them are late to the proverbial "party."

In my opinion, here is what they share in common and where there are differences:

1. Their authors rely on a wealth of reputable sources, all duly cited. Given the nature and extent of Salinger's efforts to protect his privacy, however, this was a much greater challenge for Slawenski.

2. Those who read these books will probably learn about as much as they want and need to know about the subject. Whereas there is a wealth of biographical material that focuses on Catherine, however, there is relatively much less concerning Salinger for the reason just cited.

3. Their authors write very well. For example, the presentation of the material flows smoothly. True, Massie and Slawenski have quite different writing styles and historical perspectives but both proceed through the material with remarkable dexterity.

In her article for The New York Times (Monday, February 1, 2010), Katie Zezima shares what she learned from conversations with Salinger's friends and neighbors.

1. He was a regular at the Windsor Diner (VT) near Cornish, and, at the weekly ($12 roast beef, all-you-can eat) dinners at First Congregational Church in nearby Heartland, VT.

2. He was among the rare patrons of the dinners who tipped the local high school students who waited on tables.

3. Salinger and his wife, Colleen O'Neil "were very generous" to the town of Cornish according to Keith L. Jones, a selectman and owner of Cornish Automotive.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

THOUGHTS ON SLAWENSKI'S SALINGER BIO

Mr. Wayne says:

J. D. Salinger: A Life (Hardcover) I just finished reading Slawenski's JDS bio. Read more

Published 1 month ago by Mr. Wayne

Three Stars

Published 2 months ago by judith forristal

Five Stars

Enjoyable read. Five stars.

Published 3 months ago by Brooks Garner

Kenneth Slawenski gives a good review of Salinger's published writings...

Kenneth Slawenski gives a good review of Salinger's published writings but not much about Salinger as "a person". Read more

Published 4 months ago by James H. Pipkin

Very slow in places. What a character he was ...

Very slow in places. What a character he was.

Published 4 months ago by Marjorie Flasher

A very interesting literary biography of a very complicated man.

I heartedly recommend this biography. A New Yorker of American Jewish background who was profoundly influenced by his World War II experience as an infantryman who witnessed the... Read more

Published 10 months ago by Amazon Customer

Hiding in Plain Sight

This was such an interesting book! Author Kenneth Slawenski has worked diligently to obtain sufficient information to paint a clear picture of Mr. Read more

Published 11 months ago by Believer

Catch'er on the Sly

Great read. Lot's of info about one of my favorite authors. Read about a lot of stories he wrote before and during World War II which are not usually available. Read more

Published 12 months ago by Sandy Toes

Disappointed

Really not very interesting, at least to me. Wondering if the author sold many of the books Jd certainly was a different kind of man..

Published 13 months ago by jacqueline spendlove

Dang your lima beans, Slawenski!

Shiz be off the chain. I emptied three highlighters during my read. Had to buy different colored highlighters so I could highlight over what I already highlighted. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Ghostface