Dzherom Devid Selindzher

Jerome David “J. D.” Salinger was an American writer.

He was born on January 1, 1919, in New York City. His father was Solomon Salinger, a Jew of Lithuanian origin and a prosperous wholesale dealer in kosher smoked meats and cheeses. His mother, Miriam Salinger (née Mary Gillik), was of Scottish-Irish descent. Doris, Jerome’s only sister, was eight years and two months older than he was.

His father sought to give his son a good education. In 1936, Jerome graduated from the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. It was there that he wrote his first stories. In the summer of 1937, Jerome attended lectures at New York University; in 1937–1938, he traveled with his father to Austria and Poland, where, in Bydgoszcz, he studied sausage-making at his father’s instruction. After returning to the United States, he attended lectures at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, in 1938. In 1939, Salinger enrolled at Columbia University, where he took a course on the short story taught by the editor of Story magazine, W. Burnett. Jerome never completed any institution of higher education, showing neither particular academic success nor career ambition, which displeased his father, with whom he eventually quarreled permanently.

In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the army, completed officers’ and sergeants’ school of the Signal Corps, and in 1943, with the rank of sergeant, was transferred to counterintelligence and sent to Nashville, Tennessee. On June 6, 1944, Sergeant Salinger, as part of the counterintelligence unit of the 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division, took part in the Normandy landings. He worked with prisoners of war and took part in the liberation of several concentration camps.

Salinger’s writing career began with the publication of short stories in New York magazines. His first major recognition came with the short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948).

Eleven years after his first publication, Salinger released his only novel, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), which met with widespread critical acclaim and remains popular to this day among