Publishers Weekly
★ 09/23/2013
The culmination of over 200 interviews and almost a decade of research, Shields (How Literature Saved My Life) and Salerno, director of the documentary accompanying the book, offer an oral history, effectively blended with narrative and analysis of the iconic writer and his body of work. In lesser hands, this approach could quickly spiral out of control, but Shields and Salerno keep the story on track. Granted, many mileposts and lore—such as Salinger's predilection for young girls or Catcher in the Rye's influence on high-profile assassinations—will not be all that revelatory but the authors' impressive collection of first-person accounts by those who were there gives readers greater insight into the writer and his place in the world. Literary snippets, such as "I'm Crazy," a short story Salinger wrote in Europe that was the first story narrated by Holden Caulfield, and asides—"Jesus, he has a helluva talent," Hemingway is reported to have said of Salinger—combined with a number of photos will make this a must-read for fans of the celebrated author. Photos. (Sept.)
The Associated Press - Hillel Italie
Unprecedented . . . Nine years in the making and thoroughly documented . . . Providing by far the most detailed report of previously unreleased material, the book . . . both fleshes out and challenges aspects of the author’s legend. . . . [Salinger] has new information well beyond any possible posthumous fiction.
The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani
Revealing . . . [A] sharp-edged portrait.
Salon - Laura Miller
Refreshingly frank about [Salinger’s] many shortcomings and how they might have affected his work . . . Salinger amply documents the author’s youthful arrogance and selfishness, his infatuation with his own cleverness and his inability to see the world from the perspective of anyone who wasn’t a lot like himself.
Brain Pickings - Maria Popova
Unprecedented . . . A masterwork . . . An exquisitely researched and beautifully engineered piece of storytelling about one of modern history’s most enigmatic personas.
The Daily Beast
Juicy . . . Salinger is full of fascinating revelations. . . . The most extensive portrait yet of a writer who spent nearly sixty years doing everything in his power to avoid precisely this kind of exposure.
Entertainment Weekly
"The reminiscences are layered with a stunning array of primary material. . . . Taken as a whole—the memories, the documents, the pictures—the book feels as close as we'll ever get to being inside Salinger's head."
The Wall Street Journal
Engrossing . . . There are fascinating and unique accounts that get to the heart of Salinger. . . . The freshest material comes from Salinger’s letters, which bring his own voice, often adolescent-sounding, into the commentary. Previous biographers didn’t have access to much of this material.
The Washington Post
Salinger is the thorny, complicated portrait that its thorny, complicated subject deserves. . . . The book offers the most complete rendering yet of Salinger’s World War II service, the transformative trauma that began with the D-Day invasion and carried through the horrific Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the liberation of a Dachau subcamp.
Los Angeles Times
"Salinger gets the goods on an author's reclusive life. . . . It strips away the sheen of his exceptionalism, trading in his genius for something much more real."
Sunday Times (London) - John Walsh
A stupendous work . . . I predict with the utmost confidence that, after this, the world will not need another Salinger biography.
Time - Lev Grossman
Vivid . . . There are riches here . . . [Salinger] presents a decade’s worth of genuinely valuable research . . . Salinger doesn’t excuse its subject’s personal failings, but it helps explain them: in his fiction, Salinger had a chance to be the good, untraumatized man he couldn’t be in real life.
USA Today (3.5 out of 4 stars)
Eloquently written and exhaustively reported . . . Salinger is an unmitigated success. . . . Shields and Salerno have struck journalistic gold. Salinger is a revelation, and offers the most complete picture of an American icon, a man deified by silence, haunted by war, frustrated in love—and more frail and human than he ever wanted the world to know. . . . A startlingly revealing story.
Denver Post
"An exhaustively detailed portrait of the famously reclusive novelist."
People
"An explosive new biography."
Washington Post
"Positively thick with previously unreleased photos, interviews, and correspondence."
NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile
There’s one great thing about this flawed biography; it provides the only audio performances from J.D. Salinger’s books and stories. (Salinger refused to have his works performed.) Taking small bits from CATCHER IN THE RYE and other works (so as not to trip copyright laws), the narrators provide a glimpse of the wonderful audiobook world that could exist if the Salinger estate eased its grip on these writings. There are other things to like about this book, as well—the breadth of research (there are statements and letters from hundreds of sources), the organization (the early emphasis on Salinger’s war experience sets the tone for his later years), and the superb full-cast narration (in particular Campbell Scott’s persuasive reading). What primarily mars the project is the commentary by the authors. If they had simply let others speak, they could have eliminated their self-serving, less-than-compelling contributions. An additional wish is that the downloadable version had included access to the book’s photos. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2013-10-01
Overstuffed, thoroughly revealing biography--from oral and written sources, and always episodic--of the legendary writer. The big news in Shields (How Literature Saved My Life, 2013, etc.) and Salerno's book, the companion to Salerno's documentary, has been the promise of several new books, completed and approved by Salinger, that will be issued between 2015 and 2020. One is a World War II story, and therein hangs another tale--and a long part of the present volume. Other biographers have noted how strong a part Salinger's wartime experience played in his subsequent thought, but Shields and Salerno chase down the story in minute detail, including Salinger's witness to the liberation of Nazi death camps and the psychological breakdown that ensued: "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live." As he went into combat at Normandy, we learn, Salinger carried six chapters of Catcher in the Rye--"not only as an amulet to help him survive," Shields notes, "but as a reason to survive." Catcher, Salinger's most famous book, was of course autobiographical, and Shields and Salerno lend specific weight to just how and how much. They also link Salinger's famous hermitage, beginning in the 1950s, not necessarily to a desire to flee fame so much as a fulfillment of the Vedanta ideals he had adopted as another kind of sanity-preserving talisman, in which withdrawal from and eventual renunciation of the world is necessary. No question but that Salinger was troubled--and, as the testimonial of former paramour Joyce Maynard and others has it, capable of cruel and creepy behavior. About the only drawback of Shields and Salerno's book is their overly credulous reliance on other writers and their heavy-handedness in piling on the heaps of negativity (some deserved) about Maynard and her ambitions. Was Salinger the major artist he has been held up to be? This book helps defend the affirmative response and whets the appetite for the Salinger books to come.
