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"I Think that J.D.Salinger is the most
talented fiction writer in America."(Hyman, Edgar p.444)
""Salinger is an oddity, an obsessive, who commands
respect.."(Kazin, Alfred p.446) These are just a portion of endless quotes
which describe Salinger's impact on typical modern day literature critic.
Throughout his career he has turned the heads of many people and has been an
inspirational writer for the generations with such books as "The Catcher
in the Rye" and "The Glass House,"
J.D.Salinger was born on the first of January
1919, in New York City, to Sol and Mirian Jilich Salinger. Salinger had one
sister, Doris, that was eight years older than him. He attended public school
on Manhattans upper west side. His grades where slightly above average. There
are also reports that he tested to a 104 on an I.Q. test. Salinger was enrolled
at thirteen, by his parents, in Manhattans "Highly rated" McBurney
school. They where concerned about his grades. He flunked out one year later.
Salinger was then enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy in the Pennsylvania
Hills. It was here that certain biographical facts begin to build up in accounting
for Salinger as a writer. It was at Valley Forge that Salinger developed a
sense of being a misfit, of having been sent away to become part of an alien
institution, and that what is needed, what is missed, is a larger, closer
family.
It was after graduating from Valley Forge that
Salinger wrote some of his first works. Salinger was deeply emotionalize by
World war two. This had a great deal to do with his first writings. "Many
of Salingers early stories do not deal directly with the war... but a war
atmosphere permeates them - and it is not one of patriotism nor is it
representative of the kind thought found in so much writing to come out of the
war. His early stories generally portray characters who feel estranged and
marooned because of WWII."(De Luca, Geraldine p.518)
Salingers greatest writing was "The
Catcher in the Rye". This book was a great achievement that first drew and
overwhelming amount of attention to him and his work. It is shown that
different generations look at the book differently and have very different
perspectives of the main character, Holden. "The catcher in the Rye is a
deceptively simple, enormously rich look who's source of appeal run in deep and
completely varied veins. The very young are likely to identify with Holden and
to see the adult world in which he so journs as completely phony for rebels and
a guide to identification of squares. The older generation is likely to
identify with some part of the society that is satirized, and to see Holden as
a bright but sick boy who's psyche needs adjustment before he can, as he will,
find his nitch and settle down."(Miller, James p.298)"Few heroes of
contemporary literature have aroused so much devotion, imitation, or
controversy as J.D.Salingers Holden Caulfield as the dissaflicted adolescent
who's lost weekend in New York is chronicled in The Catcher and the
Rye."(Galloway, David p. 445) Another of his greatest works includes
"The House of Glass". Salinger's writing style enables him to write
with such emotions that a family being so perfect could have a corruptional
feeling to it."Salingers extraordinary stories... are dominated by the
idea of the glass family as exceptional beings." (Kazin, alfred p.446) The
book has such a different twist and awkwardness to it, yet makes perfect sense
and is highly rated among critics. "The progress of his glass series is a
little more than a decade from one of the finest short stories of our
time."(Hymen, Stanley Edgar p.444)
Salingers writing style, being unique and
creative, gives the reader a sense of feeling and really being within the book
and taking a surreal journey through Salingers point of view."The problem
a ventriloquist must always get around is to make his audience forget that the
figure on his knee is just a wooden dummy not real and this is what Salinger
succeeds at doing..."(Lundquist, James p.57) His Style also brings about
the feeling of "yin-yang", or opposing forces coming
together."The conflicts suggest a certain polarity between what might be
called, with all due exaggeration, the assertive vulgarity and the responsive
outsider. Both types recur with sufficient frequency to warrant the
distinction, and their interplay defines much that is most central to Salingers
fiction."(Ihab, hassan p296) It is not surprising that Salinger relates to
the younger generations. His writing style focuses on average adolescence which
most kids identify with. Although most of his writing is based on young adults,
he intrigues the minds of young and old alike.
"In one form or another, as fellow novelist [Norman Mailer]
commented unlovingly, Salinger is everybodys favorite ... But above all is he a
favorite of that audience of students, student intellectuals, instructors, and
general literary, sensitive and sophisticated young people who respond to him
with a consciousness that he speaks for them and virtually to them, in a
language that is particularly "honest" and their own, with a vision
of things that captures their most secret judgements of the world."(Kazin,
Alfred p.297)
Salingers most criticized piece of literature
is his novel "the Catcher in the Rye". It is the work of a
conservative who is not interested in overthrowing existing institutions, but
in providing a decent world for sensitive youth who are not strong-willed enough
to flaunt tradition. Salinger has an unusual fascination with the opposite
sex." Undoubtedly part of the reason why Salinger is attracted to cuteness
is that it is a characteristic of those who are intellectually precocious
without having developed sexually. The sexlessness of Salinger's world has
often been noticed. Although prostitutes, adulterers, and such creatures
occasionally darken his pages, they are consistently denounced. His attitude
toward sex appears the product, however, not so much of a fear or hatred of sex
in itself, as of a detestation of sexual promiscuity. (Allen, Walter p.298)
Salinger had a certain style to his writing he related well to those crazy
college kids. "For the college generation of the fifties, Salinger has the
kind of importance that Scott Fitzgerald and Erenst Hemingway had for the young
people of the twenties." (Hicks, Granille p.502) Part of the reason
Salinger speaks the "language" of the youth of the world.
"Salinger has a marvelous sensitivity to the young, to the language, to
the fraudulence of contemporary America." (Hyman, Stanley Edgar p. 444)
"When one stands back from Salingers
career, it does take on a curious and disturbing pattern, He begins as a writer
of formula fiction fresh out of a course in short story writing... and then
gradually looses himself within the potentially brilliant concept of the glass
family." (Landquist, James p.151) Salinger writing has been an inspiration
to some and a joke to others. During the
climax and demise of his career time indeed shows he has gained a broad,
open-minded audience which have taken his books to heart, felt and understood
him.
Allen, Walter
"The Modern
Novel"
E.P.Duton and Co.
Inc. 1964
Baumbach,
Johnathan
"The Saint
as a Young Man"
New York
University Press 1965
De Luca, Geradlin
"The Lion
and the Unicorn"
1978
Galloway, David
"The Love
Ethic"
University of
Texas Press 1970
Hicks, Granille
"J.d.Salinger:
Search for Wisdom"
The Saturday
Review. July 25, 1959
Hyman, Stanley
Edgar
"J.D.Salingers
house of Glass"
Horizon Press
1966
Ihab, Hanssan
Princeton
University Press; Princeton Paperback 1961
Kazin, Alfred
"Bright Book
of Life"
Little, Brown and
Co. 1973
Kazin, Alfred
"J.D.Salinger;
Everybody's Favorite"
Contemporaries,
1958
Lundquist, James
"J.D.Salinger"
Frederick Ungar
Publishing, New york 1979
Miller, James
University of
Minnesota
Pamphlets on
American writers, 1965
Unknown Author
September 16,
1961. pg.84
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