di Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010)
Salinger's main interest is the conflict between the superficial and the vulgar world of the American society and the loneliness and dissatisfaction of sensitive adolescents, who still believe in love, friendship, honesty and find a world without ideals, selfish and often corrupted. Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City in 1919. In 1939 he attended a short-story writing class at the university of Columbia and began writing stories for reviews and magazines. During the World War II he was conscripted into the Army and sent to Europe as a secretary agent.
In 1951 he published The Catcher in the Rye, which made him one of the most popular writers among young people, as it reflected the dissatisfaction of the young generations with the hypocrisy and conformity of modern society.
He wrote little since the early 1960s; he hated publicity and interviews , and lived in virtual seclusion on his farm in New Hamsphire. He died in 2010.
-His main works are:
-The Cathcher in the Rye (1951).
-Nine Stories (1953).
-Franny and Zooey (1961), a collection of short stories.
In the Catcher in the Rye:
The protagonist is a seventeen year old Holden Caulfield, who is expelled from an expensive boarding school whose methods environment and snobbish respectability he cannot stand. He escapes from the school, but, afraid to inform his parents, 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. Salinger's Holden is a dreamy, rebellious but still insecure, over-sensitive teenager, his loneliness , his wish for sincere friendship, love and comprehension, reflect the mood of adolescents of the 1950s and 1960s, and the novel became a kind of Bible for the young generation of the time - and in many respects remains so today.
