J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger, whose 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, is one of the most widely read literary works in history, was born in Manhattan on this date in 1919. His father sold kosher food; his mother changed her name from Marie to Miriam and passed as Jewish without converting (Salinger did not find out that his mother was not Jewish until after he became a bar mitsve). The first of his stories accepted by the New Yorker was a 1941 piece about a jittery kid named Holden Caufield; the outbreak of war with Japan postponed its publication for five years, during which time Salinger saw combat on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge, among other bloody episodes, and was also among the first American soldiers to liberate concentration camps. Salinger became a practicing Zen Buddhist and a famous recluse, following his achievement of fame with The Catcher in the Rye. He was involved also with Scientology, Christian Science, the teachings of Edgar Cayce, and numerous other fringe spirituality movements. His other books were Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961) and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). He died at 91 in 2010.
“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” —J.D. Salinger