J.D. Salinger, Before He Was a Legend

The passing of author J.D. Salinger marks a sad day in the literary world. He was one of the greats, a legend whose provactice work “touched a nerve” with readers and stirred decades of controversy. But who was he before all that? And how did he climb to such incredible heights in his writing career? In celebration of his life, we’re going to find out…

Salinger’s story started out like many of ours: he found a passion early on but didn’t follow it because of someone else’s opinion. For Salinger, that passion was acting. Through a number of high school performances he proved that he had a natural talent for it, but he never pursued it because his father was strongly against it. It wasn’t until after high school, when he was attending the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, that he discovered his love of writing. They say that he used to write stories under his covers late at night by the glow of a flashlight

Of course, his short stories didn’t offer much to build a career on, so he ventured off to college at NYU, where he thought about studying special education. He didn’t even make it through the first year before dropping out.

After his stint at NYU, his father urged him learn his business – meat importing – and sent him off to Austria to work. When he returned two years later, he gave college another try, this time at Ursinus College. But that only lasted one semester.

It was then that Salinger decided to take a writing class that Columbia was offering in the evenings. You’d think he would’ve been a star right out of the gate. But that wasn’t the case at all. According to his teacher, Whit Burnett (the editor of Story magazine), “Salinger did not distinguish himself until a few weeks before the end of the second semester, at which point ‘he suddenly came to life’ and completed three stories.” It was through this ‘coming to life’, that Salinger produced “The Young Folks”, a short story that was accepted for publication in Story in the spring of 1940, when Salinger was 21.

This is where his writing career takes off, right? Well, not quite. At age 22, Salinger tried yet another path and began working as an Activities Director on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. All the while he kept writing and soon he began submitting his short stories to The New Yorker. But one by one they were rejected. After seven consecutive stories had been rejected he finally caught a break and the eighth was accepted. “Slight Rebellion off Madison”, was a Manhattan-set story about a disaffected teenager named Holden Caulfield with “pre-war jitters”. Jack pot, right? Wrong. Because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Salinger’s story was pulled and didn’t end up getting published until five years later.

During those five years, Salinger served his country in the war, collecting experiences that he later drew on in his work. After the war, he continued submitting his stories to The New Yorker but again, the rejection letters flowed in.

Salinger thought his big break had finally come when Whit Burnett (his teacher from Columbia) got him a book deal for a collection of his short stories, but the publisher overruled Burnett and ended up rejecting the book.

After so much rejection, most people would’ve given up and gotten a new dream. But Salinger persisted and wrote “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” when he was 29. Once again he submitted it to The New Yorker. This time they loved it and they accepted it immediately. In fact, they were so impressed with it that they signed a contract for the first right of refusal on all of Salinger’s future stories. This marked the turning point for Salinger.

In the years that followed, he quietly worked on The Catcher in the Rye, a novel based on Holden Caulfield (the protagonist from his short story “Slight Rebellion off Madison”). Salinger was 32 years-old by the time The Catcher in the Rye was published, which was well over a decade after his writing dreams began. Of course, The Catcher in the Rye was an instant success and it rocketed his career to unfathomable heights. The book spent 32 weeks on the New York Times Bestsellers list and, to date, has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide.

Sadly, Salinger died of natural causes in his home in New Hampshire this past Wednesday. He was 91.

In honor of his life…what is your favorite Salinger story/character/quote?