J. D. Salinger be a prequel to "The Catcher in the Rye". Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York on January 1, 1919. His father, Sol Salinger, sold kosher cheese, and was from a Jewish family of Lithuanian descent, his own father having been the rabbi for the Adath Jeshurun Congregation in Louisville, Kentucky. Salinger's mother, Marie ("née" Jillich), was born in Atlantic, Iowa, of German, Irish, and Scottish descent, but changed her name to Miriam and considered herself Jewish after marrying Salinger's father. Salinger did not learn that his mother was not of Jewish ancestry until just after he celebrated
J. D. Salinger of Zen Buddhism, to the point that he "gave reading lists on the subject to his dates" and arranged a meeting with Buddhist scholar D. T. Suzuki. In 1947, the author submitted a short story titled simply "The Bananafish" to "The New Yorker". William Maxwell, the magazine's fiction editor, was impressed enough with "the singular quality of the story" that the magazine asked Salinger to continue revising it. He spent a year reworking it with "New Yorker" editors and the magazine accepted the story, now titled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", and published it in the January 31, 1948 issue.