Salinger - Softcover

Shields, Professor David; Salerno, Shane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476744858 ISBN 13: 9781476744858

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2014

Synopsis

An instant New York Times bestseller, this "explosive biography" (People) of one of the most beloved and mysterious figures of the twentieth century is "as close as we'll ever get to being inside J.D. Salinger's head" (Entertainment Weekly).

This "revealing" (The New York Times) and "engrossing" (The Wall Street Journal) oral biography, "fascinating and unique" (The Washington Post) and "an unmitigated success" (USA TODAY), has redefined our understanding of one of the most mysterious figures of the twentieth century.

In nine years of work on Salinger, and especially in the years since the author's death, David Shields and Shane Salerno interviewed more than 200 people on five continents, many of whom had previously refused to go on the record about their relationship with Salinger. This oral biography offers direct eyewitness accounts from Salinger's World War II brothers-in-arms, his family members, his close friends, his lovers, his classmates, his neighbors, his editors, his publishers, his New Yorker colleagues, and people with whom he had relationships that were secret even to his own family. Their intimate recollections are supported by more that 175 photos (many never seen before), diaries, legal records, and private documents that are woven throughout; in addition, appearing here for the first time, are Salinger's "lost letters"--ranging from the 1940s to 2008, revealing his intimate views on love, literature, fame, religion, war, and death, and providing a raw and revelatory self-portrait.

The result is "unprecedented" (Associated Press), "genuinely valuable" (Time), and "strips away the sheen of [Salinger's] exceptionalism, trading in his genius for something much more real" (Los Angeles Times). According to the Sunday Times of London, Salinger is "a stupendous work...I predict with the utmost confidence that, after this, the world will not need another Salinger biography."

About this title

Review:

A stupendous work of research. . . . hugely impressive . . . I predict with the utmost confidence that, after this, the world will not need another Salinger biography -- (Sunday Times) )

An explosive new biography . . . Shields and Salerno have pulled off several coups . . . impressively non-judgmental (Daily Telegraph) )

A fresh look at J.D. Salinger s triumphant, traumatic, tawdry life . . . [Salinger] presents a decade s worth of genuinely valuable research (Time) )

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 -- USA Today)

Revealing . . . a sharp-edged portrait (New York Times) )

Unprecedented . . . A masterwork . . . An exquisitely researched and beautifully engineered piece of storytelling about one of modern history s most enigmatic personas -- Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) )

Salinger gets the goods on an author s reclusive life . . . It s the most common story in the world, and it strips away the sheen of his exceptionalism, trading in his genius for something much more real (Los Angeles Times) )

David Shields and Shane Salerno crack open the mythos of the reclusive author. . . . Salinger is the thorny, complicated portrait that its thorny, complicated subject deserves. . . . The book offers the most complete rendering yet (The Washington Post) )

Engrossing (The Wall Street Journal) )

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 (Entertainment Weekly) )

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 (Associated Press) )

Refreshingly frank . . . thrillingly told . . . 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 (Salon) )

An explosive biography (People) )

Thoroughly revealing . . . This book helps defend the affirmative response and whets the appetite for the Salinger books to come --(Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author:

David Shields is the author of fifteen books, including the New York Times bestseller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead; Reality Hunger, named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications; and Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into twenty languages.

Shane Salerno is the director, producer, and writer of Salinger, which premiered theatrically in 2013 from the Weinstein Company and will debut as the 200th episode of American Masters on PBS in early 2014. In addition to Salinger, Salerno has written and produced a number of successful films and TV series. He most recently co-wrote and served as executive producer of the critically acclaimed film Savages, directed by three-time Oscar winner Oliver Stone.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1476744858
• ISBN 13: 9781476744858
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 720