Biography Essay

The entire body of writing by which Jerome David Salinger wishes to be known is contained in four small books—one novel and thirteen short stories. All of these were published in the eleven and a half years between January 1948 and June 1959; and all but the novel and two of the stories originally appeared in the New Yorker magazine. Yet despite this limited body of work, Salinger remained for at least a dozen years, from 1951 to 1963, the most popular American fiction writer with serious high school and college students, as well as many adults, and his few publications elicited an enormous body of criticism. Few writers have developed such a major reputation for such a small body of work, largely from a single magazine noted for its rigid formulae and chic appeal to educated, upper-middle-class readers (especially since Salinger's fiction is notable for its unwavering...