Jerome David Salinger and His Impact on American Literature

Questo appunto di Letteratura Inglese riguarda lo scrittore americano Jerome David Salinger. L’appunto riassume la biografia dell’autore e presenta alcune opere importanti focalizzandosi sul suo romanzo più noto, “The Catcher in the Rye”.

Salinger’s life

Jerome David Salinger was an American writer. He is best known for his novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. He was born in New York City in 1919. His father was Jewish, whereas his mother was Christian. Like Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye”, he grew up in New York City, attending various prep schools and a military academy. Then, he attended a number of colleges, including Columbia University, but didn’t graduate from any of them. In 1939 he attended a short-story writing class at Columbia University and began writing stories for reviews and magazines. During World War II, he was conscripted into the Army and sent to Europe as a secretary agent. After his return from service, his name and writing style started to be associated with “The New Yorker” magazine, which published many of his stories. Some of them were inspired by the author’s wartime experiences. In 1951, Salinger published “The Catcher in the Rye”, which made him one of the most popular writers among young people, as it reflected the dissatisfaction of young generations with the hypocrisy and conformity of modern society. Salinger hated publicity and interviews and lived in virtual seclusion on his farm in New Hampshire. He died in 2010.

Salinger’s works

Among Salinger’s best-known works are:

• “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951), a novel which describes two days in the life of a 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield;
• “Nine Stories” (1953), a collection of short stories including two of Salinger’s most famous stories, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esmé – with Love and Squalor";
• “Franny and Zooey” (1961), a book containing two interrelated stories. The stories, which were published first in “The New Yorker” and then in book form, are about Franny and Zooey Glass, two members of the family that was at the center of most of Salinger’s short fiction.

Salinger was mainly interested in the conflict between the superficial and the vulgar world of American society. He also dealt with the loneliness and dissatisfaction of sensitive adolescents, who still believed in love, friendship and honesty but found a world without ideals, which was selfish and often corrupted.

What is “The Catcher in the Rye”?

The protagonist of this novel is 16-year-old Holden Caulfield, who is expelled from an expensive boarding school for failing most of his classes. As he is afraid to inform his parents, he wanders for three days in New York in a kind of brief picaresque adventure, meeting all kinds of people whose superficiality, corruption and immorality leave him even more frustrated and lonely. Holden is a dreamy, rebellious but still insecure, over-sensitive teenager; his loneliness and his wish for sincere friendship, love and comprehension reflect the mood of adolescents in the 1950s and 1960s. The novel became a sort of Bible for the young generations of the time, and in many respects remains so today. The events, which are narrated in first person by young Holden Caulfield, most likely occur in the weeks immediately preceding Christmas 1949. Although not explicitly stated, it is possible to infer the year from some time references the author introduces into the story. The events unfold over the course of a single weekend, from Saturday, the day Holden decides to leave the school where he was studying, to the following Monday morning, when the boy goes to the zoo with his sister. As for the setting, the story begins in a fictional town in Pennsylvania, Agerstown, where the school attended by Holden, Pencey, is based. The narrative then moves to New York City, in the Manhattan metropolitan area between the southern part of Central Park and Greenwich Village, where all the subsequent events occur. “The Catcher in the Rye” is a bildungsroman which follows an essential experience in the young protagonist’s life and focuses on his attempt to transition from childhood to adulthood. The term “Bildungsroman”, which comes from the German words for “novel” and “education”, refers to a literary genre which describes the psychological and moral growth of a young protagonist from childhood to adulthood. Bildungsromans usually feature adult characters who act as antagonists toward the protagonist, embodying models of maturity the main character may accept or reject. In “The Catcher in the Rye”, Holden meets many adults and rejects almost all of them as “phonies.” As regards the style and language that characterize the novel, Holden uses a colloquial language which features 1950s-era slang and curse words. Like Holden, the other students at Pencey use slang and swearwords frequently, whereas the more mature characters rarely employ slang and frequently ask Holden to stop swearing.
Per ulteriori approfondimenti su "The Catcher in the Rye" ("Il Giovane Holden") vedi anche qua