Salinger, J. D. (Jerome David Salinger), 1919-2010, American novelist and short-story writer, b. New York City. Salinger depicts the loneliness and frustration of individuals caught in a world of banalities and restricting conformity. His best-known work, The Catcher in the Rye (1951), is a picaresque novel that describes the adventures of a schoolboy at odds with society. It remains an extremely popular novel among adolescents, who view it as a testament to the purity and honesty of youth. Many of his short stories concern the Glass family, presented by Salinger as overly sensitive people in a materialistic world. In 1965, Salinger retreated from public life, winning an injunction in 1987 against a researcher who intended to publish excerpts of his letters. Collections of his stories, most of which first appeared in the New Yorker, include Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters (1963), and Seymour, An Introduction (1963).

(born Jan. 1, 1919, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. writer. He began to publish short stories in periodicals in 1940. After World War II his stories, some based on his army experiences, appeared increasingly in The New Yorker. His entire literary output comprises 13 stories and novellas— collected in Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction (1963)—and The Catcher in the Rye (1951), a novel of adolescent anguish that won great critical and popular admiration, especially among college students. He retreated into a mysterious seclusion in New Hampshire and ceased to publish.

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