The American Literature
Georgi Vasilev
English Philology 4th year/100304104
Part II - American Literature
Topics: 2,44,55
SECTION ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Among the most celebrated and enigmatic twentieth-century American writers, I choose J.D. Salinger as my main author because is best known for his first and only published novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as for him being a short story master, a defining portrait of adolescent in postwar American society. The novel's disaffected hero, Holden Caulfield, continues to speak to generations of young readers as an endearing icon of youthful cynicism and defiance against adult “phoniness” and conformity. Salinger is also acclaimed as a master of the short story form. His Glass family saga, an interrelated series of stories contained in Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey , and Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters; and Seymour: An Introduction, further established his popularity and spawned a proliferation of critical interest in his work - an “industry” of exegesis that Salinger sought to quell through his self-imposed exile. As for Franny and Zooey, it consists of the short story named Franny and a novella called Zooey. Here he combines them in one piece of work, as they have been published previously as separate works.
Born in New York City, Salinger is the second child of Sol Salinger, a prosperous Jewish importer, and Miriam Jillich Salinger, a gentile of Scotch-Irish descent. Raised in upscale Manhattan apartment buildings, Salinger attended New York public schools before enrolling at the exclusive McBurney School on the upper West Side in 1932. Recalled as an aloof, introspective, and academically unexceptional student, Salinger was subsequently sent to Valley Forge Military
Academy in Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1936. While at Valley Forge, he contributed to the school's literary magazine, served as literary editor of his senior yearbook, and began to compose his first stories. In 1937 Salinger
English Philology 4th year/100304104
Part II - American Literature
Topics: 2,44,55
SECTION ONE: GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Among the most celebrated and enigmatic twentieth-century American writers, I choose J.D. Salinger as my main author because is best known for his first and only published novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as for him being a short story master, a defining portrait of adolescent in postwar American society. The novel's disaffected hero, Holden Caulfield, continues to speak to generations of young readers as an endearing icon of youthful cynicism and defiance against adult “phoniness” and conformity. Salinger is also acclaimed as a master of the short story form. His Glass family saga, an interrelated series of stories contained in Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey , and Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters; and Seymour: An Introduction, further established his popularity and spawned a proliferation of critical interest in his work - an “industry” of exegesis that Salinger sought to quell through his self-imposed exile. As for Franny and Zooey, it consists of the short story named Franny and a novella called Zooey. Here he combines them in one piece of work, as they have been published previously as separate works.
Born in New York City, Salinger is the second child of Sol Salinger, a prosperous Jewish importer, and Miriam Jillich Salinger, a gentile of Scotch-Irish descent. Raised in upscale Manhattan apartment buildings, Salinger attended New York public schools before enrolling at the exclusive McBurney School on the upper West Side in 1932. Recalled as an aloof, introspective, and academically unexceptional student, Salinger was subsequently sent to Valley Forge Military
Academy in Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1936. While at Valley Forge, he contributed to the school's literary magazine, served as literary editor of his senior yearbook, and began to compose his first stories. In 1937 Salinger