Salinger, J(erome) D(avid) (Vol. 3) - Salinger, J(erome) D(avid) 1919–
Salinger, J(erome) D(avid) 1919–
Salinger, American novelist and short story writer, created in Holden Caulfield a character who became the prototype of alienated adolescence for an entire generation of Americans. His best-known works are The Catcher in the Rye and Franny and Zooey. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 5-8, rev. ed.)
Salinger sees the world in terms of allies and enemies. He has a good deal of natural style, a cruel ear, a dislike of ideas (the enemy's intelligence system), and a ventriloquist's knack of disguising his voice. The artless dialect written by Holden is an artful ventriloquial trick of Salinger's, like the deliberate, halting English of Hemingway's waiters, fishermen, and peasants—anyone who speaks it is a good guy, a friend of the author's, to be trusted….
The world of insiders, it would appear, has grown infinitely larger and more accommodating as Salinger has "matured." Where Holden...
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