Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City to a Jewish importer of kosher cheese and his Scotch-Irish wife. He had one sibling, an older sister named Doris. The Salingers lived in a wealthy Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan. Growing up, J.D. (also called Sonny, and today called Jerry by friends and family) was distant with his father. Being half Jewish (his mother was Catholic) was a source of much conflict in J.D., so much in fact that he did not even attend his father’s funeral. The conflict was more of a social conflict than a religious one, however. Salinger was very fond of his mother, but his father had always put a lot of pressure on him to succeed in school and get a steady job, preferably in the meat and cheese importing business. After viewing a meat packing plant, Salinger decided he did not want to have anything to do with the business, and this trauma is most likely also a reason for his vegetarianism as an adult. Salinger grew up wealthy, but because of the pressure his dad placed on him to land a high paying job as an adult, he resented it, and finally decided to become a writer.
Jerome received high marks in grade school, but once he entered prep school, he was dropped out for fail

Though they all lived together, Salinger feels very differently about his children, and they, too feel very differently toward him. In her book, his daughter criticizes her father, recalling a story about how when she got pregnant, instead of celebrating and being happy that he was going to be a grandfather, Salinger told her that was disgusted and that he thought she should get an abortion. Salinger believed pregnancy was something dirty, and this was apparent during his ex-wife’s pregnancies, as he gave her a very hard time. His son however, adores his father, and the feeling is very mutual. In fact, even though Salinger is a strict organic vegetarian, he will eat pizza with his son when they go out. Both his son and daughter carry his artistic traits. Peggy is a published author, and Matthew is an actor.

In 1939, Salinger took a class on short story writing at Columbia University, taught by professor Whit Burnett, who was the editor and founder of Story Magazine, where J.D. later had short stories published. Salinger was drafted during World War II into the infantry that took part in the invasion of Normandy. During his time in Europe, Salinger was able to write short stories as well as meet Ernest Hemmingway. Although he later parodied and criticized Hemmingway, Salinger had a great appreciation for the author. Many speculate that the war greatly traumatized Salinger, and his daughter claims that he was likely one of the first U.S. soldiers to actually see what had been happening in the concentration camps. After four months of seeing first 75% of his platoon dying, and later 125% (the unit had continual replacements), Salinger checked himself into the hospital for “Section 8” psychiatric help. Salinger has never written about or publicly discussed any of his war experiences, though some of his fictional characters were in the army.

“A Perfect Day For Bananafish,” in which Seymour Glass yells at his wife for not knowing German so that she can read some of his books, kisses the foot of a little girl, and eventually commits suicide, is very similar in a lot of ways to traits seen in Salinger himself. He is very irrational and gets upset over pointless things, has a strange attraction to girls much too young for him, and is quite focused on suicide. In a manner of speaking, because of his adamant reclusive behavior, Salinger is slowly killing himself.

His third wife is a nurse thirty years younger than him, named Colleen. They still live together in Co