What an interesting book! Salinger was not at all the man I imagined he would be. The approach of the two authors makes this a highly interesting, engaging and sometimes quite intense read. I would have given it 4 stats except that: 1) they did not describe their unique approach in the introduction (it's essentially paragraph quotes from all of their many sources, including themselves); 2) some of the quotes were repeated at length; and 3) there was hardly any analysis of Salinger's writing woven into the biogrqphy. Still, I would recommend it. ( )

Chapter on "Nine Stories" ingeniously reads the collection as a series of stories about the trauma of war. The chapter on "Catcher in the Rye" was disappointing, quoting from movie stars like Edward Norton and Jake Gyllenhaal (who bizarrely calls Holden "the white Malcolm X"). The chapter on "Assassins" was interesting, but could have cut in half. All in all, I found this biography to be a real "page turner". ( )

Big problems here. The structure is oral history, but the speakers' relationships to Salinger aren't identified, though they are (re)arranged in chronological order of Salinger's life, so for example you can get an ex-lover (seemingly) in conversation with an unconnected war historian. There's a lot of 'in a letter to a friend, Salinger admitted Holden was based on his youth' -type stuff, but who is the friend & where is the letter? This stuff isn't sourced. Also the authors themselves break in to the oral narrative with these armchair psychology interludes that are often just tabloidy. They're nothing.

This book actually isn't very different than the previous bios, which it attacks in its opening pages. Shields & Salerno may (MAY) have more information than anyone else, but they haven't done anything useful or interesting with it. ( )

This was an ambitious project: interviews with over 200 people over nine years. The result is an interesting, although because of its oral history format, somewhat disjointed picture of the famously elusive author of Catcher in the Rye and many stories of the Glas family.

Salinger was undoubtedly a brilliant writer, publishing his first story in Story magazine when he was just 21 years old and getting a "first look" contract with The New Yorker before the age of 30. However, his very bad war during World War II (initial assault on D-Day, the battle of Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge & stumbling into a Nazi death camp) left him with a severe case of PTSD before anyone knew what that was.. His penchant for very young girls - precipitated by his relationship with Oona O'Neill in the late 1930's and early 1940's - also added to his strange personality.

Was his retreat to Cornish, New Hampshire sincere, or just a ruse to get attention for himself? Is there a vault of stories waiting to be published? Maybe the fact that we're asking about question #2 answers question #1. ( )

This book was a journey for me to read. Many other books got in the way that delayed me. Salinger is a great companion piece to the documentary that played in theatres earlier in the year. It dove into greater detail about J.D. Salinger and his very complicated life. I can understand the reviewers who did not like it. The information in Salinger has been around for years. The only new revelations was probably that J.D. Salinger did leave unpublished works in a safe that would only be released after his death. Salinger specifies that it would be between 2015 and 2020.

Many fans complained that, in both the book and documentary, that a lot of the information was regurgitated. They have heard it all before. However, I wasn't a die-hard fan of J.D. Salinger's even though I really enjoyed Catcher in the Rye. Honestly, when I heard he died back in 2010, I already thought he was dead for some time. My point is, that for a newcomer, Salinger succeeds. Salerno and Shields did a fine job using biographical, outsider interviews, and their own theories to describe the view of the author.

My view is that J.D. Salinger was a very complicated man who was suffering from a very potent case of PTSD. He didn't or couldn't acclimate to civilian life. He was sort of like a prisoner being released and having no aftercare program to help him transition. He found solace in two things: writing (he wrote the first 6 chapters of Catcher in the War) and in the Vedanta religion. J.D. Salinger was a very introverted dark man to begin with, and to be put in that kind of environment of war, caused him to retreat further into himself.

His attraction to very young girls was disturbing. I'm not sure if it was because that before the War, he had Oona O'Neill and everything was kind of hopeful for him. Every young girl ranging from Jean Miller to Joyce Maynard was a futile attempt to get back to it. His old treatment of them when they didn't meet his standards, I believe, was a way to get back at Oona for the treatment she showed him. She started ignoring his letters when she met Charlie Chaplin. Then Salinger found out from an Army comrade of his that she eventually married Chaplin. That was cold.

Unfortunately, many of J.D. Salinger's feelings are speculative. They were based on what others thought he would feel. I would have like to know how he really felt when people were using Catcher in the Rye as a coda for killing innocent people. Any work of art can be twisted to fit the needs of the beholder. It must have been disheartening to see something that worked so hard on and that saved his life being construed that way. ( )