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 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had left specific instructions authorizing a timetable, to start between 2015 and 2020, for the release of several unpublished works.