Shane Salerno

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.… (más)

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.… (más)

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.… (más)