J. D. Salinger J. D. Salinger Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American writer known for his widely read novel, "The Catcher in the Rye". Following his early success publishing short stories and "The Catcher in the Rye", Salinger led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980. Salinger was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school. Several were published in "Story" magazine in the early 1940s before he began serving in World War II. In
J. D. Salinger to Sufi mysticism through the writer and thinker Idries Shah's seminal work "The Sufis", as were others writers such as Doris Lessing and Geoffrey Grigson, and the poets Robert Graves and Ted Hughes. As well as Idries Shah, Salinger also read the Taoist philosopher Lao Tse and the Hindu Swami Vivekananda who introduced the Indian philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world. In an oral biography titled "Salinger", authors David Shields and Shane Salerno assert that the author had left specific instructions authorizing a timetable, to start between 2015 and 2020, for the release of several unpublished works.