If you do, you"ll start missing everybody" (Salinger 214). That quote from the main character in The Catcher in the Rye is very much like something the author, J.D. Salinger would say. J.D. Salinger, drawing from his own personal experiences, wrote the controversial and much debated The Catcher in the Rye, a novel that has given him much of his reputation and has been banned in many schools and public libraries (J.D. Salinger, Lomazoff).
J.D. Salinger, or Jerome Davis Salinger, was born in New York City in 1919 to Jewish Sol Salinger and the Irish-Catholic Miriam Jillich Salinger. Salinger did not have a good relationship with his father partly because he was the cause for him being half Jewish and that was a foundation of dispute for him. He did however have a very good relationship with his mother (Morrill, J.D. Salinger).
In 1932, Salinger enrolled in the elite McBurney School and was known as standoffish and unexceptional student academically. In 1936 he graduated from the Valley Forge Military Academy at which he served as literary editor of the senior yearbook and began to compile his first stories. He attended New York University for a short period of time where he "didn't apply himself." He then traveled to Vienna studying importing business and he continued to write. In 1939 Salinger began attending a writing class at Columbia University that was taught by Walt Burnett. Burnett recognized Salinger's talent and ran a story by him, "The Young Folks" in Story Magazine. In 1942 Salinger was drafted into the army in which he served through World War II. In the war he served as an interrogator in the Counter-Intelligence Corps and a participant in the D-Day offensive and the campaign to liberate France. Salinger has also been married three times and has three children. All of these events in his life have had an effect on all his novels (Morrill, J.D. Salinger). .
J.D. Salinger got serious about his writing career while attending Columbia University.
