Early Life
Jerome David “Sonny” Salinger was born January 1, 1919 in New York City. His father was Jewish and ran a successful cheese and ham import business. His mother was was not Jewish, but at the time mixed-marriages were looked down upon by many members of society. She was private about her identity, and Salinger didn't find out about his mother's lack of Jewish heritage until his bar mitzvah when he was thirteen. As he grew older, Salinger changed prep schools almost as often as his protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield. In 1936, Salinger graduated from Valley Forge Military School and went on to several different colleges, including New York University and Columbia, though he never graduated, but it was there that he began writing seriously.
Writing
Salinger's short stories began appearing in magazines like The New Yorker in the early 1940s. In 1942, he joined the army and fought in WWII. During that time he met with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway, and the two struck up a friendship and exchanged letters for many years.
In 1951, his first and only full-length novel Cather in the Rye was published. He had success with short stories and novellas in the years that followed, but he gradually published less and less and withdrew from public life. His last work, “Hapwork, 16, 1924,” a short story, was published in 1965, and he gave his last interview in 1980.
Later Life and Death
Over the years, Salinger has valued his privacy despite his fame. In the late 1980s, a British writer, Ian Hamilton, tried to use some of Salinger's letters in a biography, and Salinger sued him. The lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, ruling in Salinger's favor. He continued to sue over the years to protect his privacy and copyrights. In the most recent case, 2009, a federal district judge in Manhattan banned the publishing of a book called 69 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, written by Frederick Colting and containing a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield.
Many speculate that he was still writing up until his death on January 27, 2010, and that more works will appear posthumously in the coming years.
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