J.D.塞林格的简介

J.D.塞林格的简介

杰罗姆·大卫·塞林格（Jerome David Salinger，1919年1月1日出生） 美国作家，他的《麦田里的守望者》被认为是二十世纪美国文学的经典作品之一。 塞林格出生于纽约的一个犹太富商家庭，他在15岁时就被父亲送到宾夕法尼亚州的一所军事学校。1936年塞林格从军事学校毕业，1937年又被做火腿进口生意的父亲送到波兰学做火腿。塞林格在纽约的时候就开始向杂志投稿，其中大部分都是为了赚钱，但也不乏一些好文章，其中包括了《香蕉鱼的好日子》。二战中断了塞林格的写作。1942年塞林格从军，1944年他前往欧洲战场从事反间谍工作。战争令塞林格恐惧，他之后写了多本以战争为题材的书。 1946年塞林格退伍，回到纽约开始专心创作。他的第一本长篇小说《麦田里的守望者》1951年出版，获得了很大的成功，塞林格一举成名。他之后的作品包括了《弗兰尼与卓埃》（1961年）、《木匠们，把屋梁升高》和《西摩：一个介绍》（1963年）和收录了他的短篇故事的《九故事》（1953年），但都不像《麦田里的守望者》那么成功。塞林格擅长塑造早熟、出众的青少年的形象。《麦田里的守望者》获得成功之后，塞林格变得更孤僻。他在新罕布什尔州乡间的河边小山附近买下了90多英亩的土地，在山顶上建了一座小屋，过起了隐居的生活。他虽然从未放弃写作，但他在1951年之后，就很少公开出版自己的作品。他后期的作品也越来越倾向于东方哲学和禅宗。 塞林格在欧洲期间曾经与一个女医生结婚，但不久便离异。1953年他与一个叫克莱尔·道格拉斯（Claire Douglas）的女学生相识，两人后来在1955年结婚，但是后来又离婚。1972年塞格林在一本杂志上看到一个名叫乔伊斯·梅纳德（JoyceMaynard）的耶鲁大学女学生的文章和照片，立即被她吸引，两人开始通信。两人的关系在十个月后破裂。 1999年，塞林格在34年没有发表任何作品后终于发表了新的长篇小说《哈普沃兹16，1924》。《哈普沃兹16，1924》最早是以短篇的形式出现在1965年的《纽约时报》上。塞林格将这部作品授权一个小的出版公司，但是到现在他的作品都还没有出版。 2000年，塞林格与第二任妻子克莱尔·道格拉斯的女儿玛格丽特·塞林格出版了《梦的守望者：一本回忆录》一书。书中她披露了很多塞林格不为人知的秘密，像塞林格经常喝自己的尿、很少和克莱尔做爱，禁止她走访亲友等。

Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City on January 1, 1919, to a Jewish father, Sol Salinger, a successful importer of hams and cheeses, and a Christian mother, Miriam Jillich Salinger. He was the second of two children; his sister, Doris, was eight years his senior. Salinger attended public schools on the upper West Side of Manhattan and seems to have been an average student.

At age thirteen, Salinger was enrolled in the prestigious McBurney School in Manhattan, but he was dismissed with failing grades after a year. He was then sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania, which was to become the model for Pencey Prep in The Catcher in the Rye (1951). At Valley Forge, Salinger was the literary editor of the school yearbook, and there he wrote his first stories.

After he graduated from Valley Forge, Salinger attended the summer session at New York University, then accompanied his father to Vienna to learn the Polish ham business. He soon returned to the United States, however, and entered college again, this time at Ursinus College in Pennsylvania. He wrote a column called “The Skipped Diploma” for the Ursinus Weekly, but he dropped out in the middle of his first semester there. He then enrolled in a story-writing class at Columbia University taught by Whit Burnett, editor of Story magazine. Salinger’s first published story, “The Young Folks,” appeared in the March/April, 1940, issue of Story.

Salinger subsequently published stories in Collier’s and Esquire magazines, and more stories in Story, before being drafted into the Army in 1942. He attended officer training school, achieved the rank of staff sergeant, and was sent to Devonshire, England, for counterintelligence training. On D day, June 6, 1944, Salinger landed on Utah Beach in Normandy with the Fourth Army Division. As a security officer, he was assigned to interrogate captured Germans and French civilians to identify Gestapo agents. While in France, Salinger met Ernest Hemingway, to whom he later wrote an admiring letter.

After the war ended, Salinger was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment in Nuremberg, Germany, but continued to write and publish stories, as he had done throughout the war. He returned to New York in 1947 and signed a contract to write stories for The New Yorker. In 1950, Salinger’s story “For Esmé — with Love and Squalor” was designated one of the distinguished American stories of the year. Salinger spent much of this period in Greenwich Village, where he associated with other young writers and artists, and reportedly dated a wide variety of women in order to collect dialogue for his stories. He also began to exhibit a keen interest in religion — particularly Zen Buddhism, which would greatly influence his work.

Another Salinger characteristic that began to manifest itself at this time was a desire for isolation. Salinger left Greenwich Village for a cottage in Tarrytown, New York (although he is said to have finished writing The Catcher in the Rye in a room near the Third Avenue El in New York City). When The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951, Salinger went to Europe to avoid publicity and the following year traveled to Mexico. In 1953, he bought ninety acres of land on the Connecticut River in Cornish, New Hampshire. During that year, he agreed for the first and last time to be interviewed by a reporter — a sixteen-year-old high school girl writing for a local newspaper.

After marrying and divorcing a French doctor named Sylvia, in 1955 Salinger married Claire Douglas, an English-born graduate of Radcliffe College. Salinger is said to have written the story “Franny” (1955) as a wedding present for Claire, and the heroine of the story is supposed to be based on her. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1967. In 1972, Salinger began an affair with Joyce Maynard, who, at age nineteen, was just a few years older than his daughter at that time. Maynard is a writer whose memoir of life with Salinger, At Home in the World, was published in 1998. In the 1980’s, Salinger married a woman named Colleen.

Though his wife was reportedly active in the community where they lived, Salinger continued to be extremely reclusive until his death on January 27, 2010 at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Despite frequent fan mail and attempts to contact him, Salinger refused all requests for interviews and declined all correspondence. His daughter, Margaret Salinger, against her father’s will, went public with their family life with the publication of her book Dream Catcher: A Memoir in 2000. Salinger continually refused to comment on his published work, saying, “The stuff’s all there in the stories; there’s no use talking about it.”