J. D. Salinger Influence

J.D. Salinger was a man of influence and popularity, and with his most famous and controversial novel The Catcher in the Rye, he was one of few authors who’s influence that showed through his work caught the eye of many readers after World War II. His life story is one to tell to any person, and through his hardships and controversy, he sustained his legacy through his works of literature and gave a name to himself.

As a young boy born to a Jewish importer and a Scotch-Irish mother, he grew up in the area of Manhattan. He got expelled from several private preparatory schools until he was enrolled at the Valley Forge Military Academy, where he graduated in June of 1936. This Academy holds importance because it provided the model of the preparatory school called Pencey Prep in Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger began to write fiction at this time, usually under a blanket after lights out. He contributed to the school literary magazine and was the literary editor of the yearbook in his senior year. After financial struggles and downfalls, he attended Columbia University in 1939, where he took a class on short story writing, which was taught by Whit Burnett. Burnett

After the war, he started to become a writer of serious fiction, which caused some criticism at the time because of the censorships they had on literature and the media. In the story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, Seymour Glass commits suicide, which was controversial back then. He used this idea for the development of characterization for Mr. Glass, who is supposed to be Salinger’s alter ego. His stories contained stories of victims of sinister nature of the modern world, hostile conditions in contemporary life, and dilemmas that characters were put in. They reflected the thoughts of Salinger himself, who believed that these were his most “’bitter and cynical