From The Times
March 20, 2010
J. D. Salinger: A Life Raised High by Kenneth Slawenski
The first J. D. Salinger biography since his death reveals the stench of mortality that haunted his writing
by Peter Ackroyd
Certain writers are thrilled at the prospect of biography; it ministers to their vanity and confirms their selfimportance. Others panic. They write precisely in order to exorcise the burden of personality, not to have it reinforced. T. S. Eliot forbad his estate to countenance any idea of an authorised life. He was on a bus when a fellow passenger asked him if he was indeed Mr Eliot; he left his seat and fled.
Jerome David Salinger, known to friends as Jerry, had the same aversion to being known. In a writing career of almost 70 years he rarely gave interviews and was photographed on only a handful of occasions. Upon his death this year, a great many columns of newsprint were devoted not to his work — for all that was discussed — but to his silence and reticence.

His publishing history confirms that reticence. His first novel was published in 1951, and was succeeded by three volumes of long and short stories. His last work to find its way into print appeared in The New Yorker in 1965. And the rest is silence. He carried on writing, as far as is known, for the next 45 years, but he refused to allow any publication.

The silence and the secrecy were confirmed in 1985 when Ian Hamilton, the English poet and critic, submitted a typescript titled J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935-65). At once Salinger pounced, accusing Hamilton of illegally quoting from unpublished correspondence. He took Hamilton from court to court and eventually obtained the victory. Hamilton was obliged to rewrite his book. Fifteen years later Salinger’s daughter, Margaret, published Dream Catcher, a memoir in which she described “a world that dangled between dream and nightmare on a gossamer thread my parents wove, without the reality of solid ground to catch a body should he or she fall”.

There now appears a biography of Salinger, completed and published only three months after his death. It is not “authorised” and cannot have been written with Salinger’s permission or compliance. The author quotes no letters directly and is very sparing of indirect quotation. He also restricts his use of Salinger’s published work to what is generally considered to be “fair usage” in a critical context. Yet the book suffers nothing from the enforced self-censorship. It is well written, energetic and magnificently researched; a true picture of Salinger emerges from its pages.
 Read the rest of Peter Ackroyd's review at The Times. 




J. D. Salinger: A Life Raised High by Kenneth Slawenski (Pomona, £20; 480pp.)