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 New York Times" in 1977 that reading Salinger's stories for the first time was a landmark experience, and that "nothing quite like it has happened to me since". Yates describes Salinger as "a man who used language as if it were pure energy beautifully controlled, and who knew exactly what he was doing in every silence as well as in every word." Gordon Lish's O. Henry Award-winning short story "For Jeromé—With Love and Kisses" (1977, collected in "What I Know So Far", 1984) is a play on Salinger's "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor". In 2001, Louis Menand wrote in "The