About this item
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 Salinger's 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.
About the Author
Thomas Beller's most recent book, "J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist," won the New York City Book Award for Biographer/Memoir. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Cathleen Schine called the book "sensitive and irresistible," "lyrical and precise," and concluded, "'J. D. Salinger' is the story of the resonance of its subject, but it is also the story of a generous, humorous, sensitive writer, which is to say, Thomas Beller. Not much escapes him."
Beller's previous books are a collection of stories, "Seduction Theory," "The Sleep-Over Artist," a novel; and "How to Be a Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood," a collection of personal essays, many of which appeared in the New Yorker and The New York Times, publications to which he contributes regularly.
In addition to his writing, Beller has edited several anthologies, including two drawn from his website, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Through the literary journal he co-founded and edited from 1990 until its close in 2010, Open City Magazine and Books, he published a diverse array of authors, from Said Sayrafiezedeh and Meghan Daum to Sam Lipsyte and Edward St. Aubyn, among many others. He teaches creative writing at Tulane University and lives in New Orleans with his wife and two children.
