Salinger’s Soul: His Personal and Religious Odyssey

The author of the iconic 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, who famously lived out his life in seclusion in rural New Hampshire, J.D. Salinger is one of America’s best known but least understood writers. But a new biography by Stephen Shepard, founding dean of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, lifts the curtain on Salinger’s life, from his traumatic experience in World War II, to his problematic relationships with young women, to his religious beliefs. A spiritual seeker, Salinger transitioned from the Judaism of his youth to a mystical form of Hinduism known as Vedanta, which influenced his fiction from Nine Stories to Franny and Zooey. Shepard, former editor-in-chief at Business Week and author of books on journalism and literature, speaks about Salinger with David Nasaw, who is the Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the CUNY Graduate Center and an award–winning biographer of William Randolph Hearst, Andrew Carnegie, and Joseph P. Kennedy.

Presented with the Leon Levy Center for Biography.

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