The icon who disappeared. Raised in Park Avenue privilege, J. D. Salinger sought out combat, surviving five bloody battles of World War II and the liberation of a death camp, and out of that crucible he created a novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which journeyed deep into his own despair and redefined postwar America. For more than fifty years, Salinger has been one of the most elusive figures in American history. All of the attempts to uncover the truth...

"J.D. Salinger, the mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a litigious misanthrope who disowned his daughter. Jerome Charyn's Sergeant Salinger is a young WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war-from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of...

"He published his only novel more than fifty years ago. He has hardly been seen or heard from since 1965. Most writers fitting such a description are long forgotten, but if the novel is The Catcher in the Rye and the writer is J.D. Salinger...well, he's the stuff of legends, the most famously reclusive writer of the twentieth century. If you could write to him, what would you say?" "Salinger continues to maintain his silence, but Holden Caulfield,...

In 2007, French writer, Frederic Beigbeder, decided to travel to the United States in search of J.D. Salinger, who withdrew from the world in 1965 and is said to still be alive and reside somewhere in New Hampshire.

Contemporary perspectives on depression. Provides background on the life of author J.D. Salinger and the influences that shaped his work, features twelve articles that explore depression as portrayed in his novel "The Catcher in the Rye," and examines issues of depression in the twenty-first century.