J.D. Salinger AutoBiography
...rred from the traumatizing experiences that war brings. This has had a major impact on his style of writing. Not that it changed the way he wrote things, but more or less stapled himself to writing through an underdog’s eyes. For example a reoccurring family, prevalent in many of his stories is The Glass Family. He presented them as an overly sensitive family living amongst a materialistic world. It seems to me he almost has a strange obsession with writing about underachieving people. But almost all his characters have something in common, they all possess the potential to be on top and most of them are pretty insightful, but there is something that stands in their way. Whether it’d be a painful experience or just the inability to over come society’s standards and life’s letdowns, Salinger depicts the loneliness and frustration of individuals caught in a world of conformity. Adults and adolescents can find comfort in almost any of Salinger’s works. His best known work, The Catcher in the Rye shows the life of a teenager at odds with society. This remains a favorite in the eyes of many teenagers, who view it as something they can relate to because of it’s testament to the honesty of the youth. He later published many other books. Some of these include “Franny and Zooney”, “Raise High the Roof Beam”, and Carpenters and Seymour—An Introduction.” All of these literary pieces have provided a comfort and an escape for millions who shared common characteristics with all of Salinger’s characters. Because of the personal relationships that had spawned between the readers and his characters, Salinger had become famous. People realized that these characters and the feelings of comfort were all made possible by J.D. Salinger and admired him greatly for it. But because of this literary fame and notoriety, J.D. Salinger became reclusive. He moved from New York City to Cornish, New Hampshire where he continued writing novels but for certain reasons did not publish them. My opinion is that Salinger realized the fame he was receiving was almost hypocritical to his personal beliefs and literary values. Salinger’s works where all a scattered image of himself and what he was feeling at the time he wrote the story or his feelings in an earlier date. So the characters in his writings were essentially part of him. With most of the characters being at odds with society he felt as if he was betraying himself, when society was actually celebrating him and his work. So maybe the reason he left many works unpublished was because of this, and to maintain purity to his stories and characters. Salinger tried to escape public exposure or attention as much as possible, “A writers feeling of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him”- J.D. Salinger. The more he struggled with staying in the shadows, things began to take an unexpected twist. When Salinger learned that an author was going to publish a biography containing letters Salinger written to other authors and friends he sued to try on stop it. But through the process of the lawsuit two novels and many stories that Salinger kept unpublished became public in the form of court transcripts. This result was unintended. As terrible as this sounds I feel t...