Synopses & Reviews
"My childhood was lush with make-believe: wood sprites, fairies, a bower of imaginary friends, books about lands somewhere East of the Sun and West of the Moon...
In real life, however, it was 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."
In her much-anticipated memoir, Margaret A. Salinger writes about life with her famously reclusive father, J.D. Salinger -- offering a rare look into the man and the myth, what it is like to be his daughter, and the effect of such a charismatic figure on the girls and women closest to him.
Dream Catcher
With generosity and insight, Ms. Salinger has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding, and wise, yet at the same time retains the intimacy of a novel. Her story chronicles an almost cultlike environment of extreme isolation and early neglect interwoven with times of laughter, joy, and dazzling beauty. She also delves into her parents' lives before her own birth, illuminating their childhoods, their wrenching experiences during World War II, and above all the seeds and real-life inspirations for J.D. Salinger's literary preoccupation with "phonies," protracted innocence, precocious children, and spiritual perfection.
Ms. Salinger compassionately explores the complex dynamics of family relationships. Her story is one that seeks to come to terms with the dark parts of her life that, quite literally, nearly killed her, and to pass on a life-affirming heritage to her own child.
The story of being a Salinger is unique; the story of being a daughter is universal. This book appeals to anyone, J.D. Salinger fan or no, who has ever had to struggle to sort out who she really is from who her parents
dreamed she might be.
Synopsis
Salinger's long-awaited memoir of life with her father, J.D. Salinger, is a personal story of unparalleled intimacy and the most revealing portrait ever rendered of history's most reclusive literary icon. With generosity and perception, she has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding, original, and wise.
Synopsis
"My childhood was lush with make-believe: wood sprites, fairies, a bower of imaginary friends, books about lands somewhere East of the Sun and West of the Moon... In real life, however, it was 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."
In her much-anticipated memoir, Margaret A. Salinger writes about life with her famously reclusive father, J.D. Salinger -- offering a rare look into the man and the myth, what it is like to be his daughter, and the effect of such a charismatic figure on the girls and women closest to him.
Dream Catcher With generosity and insight, Ms. Salinger has written a book that is eloquent, spellbinding, and wise, yet at the same time retains the intimacy of a novel. Her story chronicles an almost cultlike environment of extreme isolation and early neglect interwoven with times of laughter, joy, and dazzling beauty. She also delves into her parents' lives before her own birth, illuminating their childhoods, their wrenching experiences during World War II, and above all the seeds and real-life inspirations for J.D. Salinger's literary preoccupation with "phonies," protracted innocence, precocious children, and spiritual perfection.
Ms. Salinger compassionately explores the complex dynamics of family relationships. Her story is one that seeks to come to terms with the dark parts of her life that, quite literally, nearly killed her, and to pass on a life-affirming heritage to her own child.
The story of being a Salinger is unique; the story of being a daughter is universal. This book appeals to anyone, J.D. Salinger fan or no, who has ever had to struggle to sort out who she really is from who her parents dreamed she might be.
Synopsis
A spirited, deeply personal inquiry into the near-mythic life and canonical work of J. D. Salinger by a writer known for his sensitivity to the Manhattan culture that was Salinger's great theme.
Synopsis
Three years after his death at ninety-one, J.D. Salinger remains our most mythic writer. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) became an American classic, and he was for a long time the writer for The New Yorker. Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters introduced, by way of the Glass family, a new type in contemporary literature: the introspective, voluble cast of characters whose stage is the Upper East Side of New York. But fame proved a burden, and in 1963 Salinger fled to New Hampshire, spending the next half century in isolation.Beller has followed his subjects trail, from his Park Avenue childhood to his final refuge, barnstorming across New England to visit various Salinger shrines, interviewing just about everyone alive who ever knew Salinger. The result is a quest biography in the tradition of Geoff Dyers Out of Sheer Rage, a book as much about the biographer as about the subject—two vivid, entertaining stories in one.
Synopsis
J.D. Salinger published his first story in
The New Yorker at age twenty-nine. Three years later came
The Catcher in The Rye, a novel that has sold more than sixty-five million copies and achieved mythic status since its publication in 1951. Subsequent books introduced a new type in contemporary literature: the introspective, hyperarticulate Glass family, whose stage is the Upper East Side. Yet we still know little about Salingers personal life and less about his character.
This was by design. In 1953, determined to escape media attention, Salinger fled to New Hampshire, where he would live until his death in 2010. Even there, privacy proved elusive: a Time cover story; a memoir by Joyce Maynard (who dropped out of Yale as a freshman to move in with him); and a legal battle over an unauthorized biography, which darkened his last decades. Yet he continued to write, and is rumored to have left behind a mass of work that his estate intends to publish.
Thomas Beller, a novelist who grew up in Manhattan, is the ideal guide to Salingers world. He gives us a sense of life at The New Yorker (where he was once a staff writer) and a portrait of editor Gus Lobrano, whose relationship with Salinger has rarely been written about. He visits Salingers summer camp and the apartment buildings where the author lived. He reads the famous works with obsessive attention, finding in them an image of his own life experience. The result is a quest biography about learning to know yourself in order to know your subject. J.D. Salinger is the triumph of a rare literary form: biography as work of art.
About the Author
Thomas Beller is the author of Seduction Theory, a collection of stories; The Sleep-Over Artist, a novel; and How to Be a Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood, an essay collection. He is a frequent contributor to The New Yorkers Culture Desk, has edited numerous anthologies including two drawn from his website, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, and was a cofounder of the literary journal Open City.
Table of Contents
Contents Introduction
Part One
A FAMILY HISTORY: 1900-1955
"How my parents were occupied and all before they had me"
- "Sometimes Thro' the Mirror Blue"
- Landsman
- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
- Detached F-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s
- We'll Bolt the Door
- Reclusion
Part Two
CORNISH: 1955-1968
- Dream Child, Real Child
- Babes in the Woods
- Border Crossing
- Snipers
- "However Innumerable Beings Are, I Vow to Save Them"
- Glimpses
- "There She Weaves by Night and Day"
- Journey to Camelot
- Boot Camp and Iced Tea
- The Birds and the Bees: Hitchcock's
- A Perfect Ten
- Notes from the Underground
- "To Sir with Love"
- Safe Harbor: A Brief Interlude Between Islands
Part Three
BEYOND CORNISH
- Island Redux
- Christmas
- Midwinter
- Springtime in Paradise: The Producers
- Woodstock
- Lost Moorings
- Kindred Spirits
- The Baby Vanishes
- A Mind in Port 378
- "Rowing in Eden"
- Woman Overboard!
- On and Off the Fast Track
- Weaving My Own Life
- Awakening
Acknowledgments