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A Life
Random House
February 2011
On Sale: January 25, 2011
464 pages
ISBN: 1400069513
EAN: 9781400069514
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American
literary history, J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists
for most of his life. Now comes a new biography that Peter
Ackroyd in The Times of London calls “energetic and
magnificently researched”—a book from which “a true picture
of Salinger emerges.” Filled with new information and
revelations—garnered from countless interviews, letters, and
public records—J. D. Salinger presents an extraordinary life
that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Kenneth Slawenski explores Salinger’s privileged youth, long
obscured by misrepresentation and rumor, revealing the
brilliant, sarcastic, vulnerable son of a disapproving
father and doting mother and his entrance into a social
world where Gloria Vanderbilt dismissively referred to him
as “a Jewish boy from New York.” Here too are accounts of
Salinger’s first broken heart—Eugene O’Neill’s daughter,
Oona, left him for the much older Charlie Chaplin—and the
devastating World War II service (“a living hell”) of which
he never spoke and which haunted him forever. J. D. Salinger features all the dazzle of this author’s
early writing successes, his dramatic encounters with
luminaries from Ernest Hemingway to Laurence Olivier to Elia
Kazan, his surprising office intrigues with famous New
Yorker editors and writers, and the stunning triumph of The
Catcher in the Rye, which would both make him world-famous
and hasten his retreat into the hills of New Hampshire. Whether it’s revealing the facts of his hasty, short-lived
first marriage or his lifelong commitment to Eastern
religion, which would dictate his attitudes toward sex,
nutrition, solitude, and creativity, J. D. Salinger is this
unique author’s unforgettable story in full—one that no
lover of literature can afford to miss.
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