Jerome David Salinger is one of the classics of the twentieth century, who forever entered the history of not only American, but also world literature. He was born in 1919 in the heart of New York - Manhattan. The boy's parents belonged to the privileged class, so they gave Jerome and his sister Doris an excellent education. In 1936, Salinger successfully graduated from military school in Valley Forge. It was within these walls that his literary debut took place. Jerome wrote the words for the school anthem, which, by the way, are still used in this educational institution today.

After graduating from college, Salinger, planning to continue his education, attended lectures first at New York University, then at Columbia, as well as at several elite colleges. Salinger never graduated from any of these prestigious institutions, since he never showed any particular desire to study and create a successful career. This had a negative impact on Jerome's relationship with his family. In particular, he had a rather difficult and cold relationship with his father, and in the end Salinger quarreled with him forever, and preferred not to even meet.

During World War II, Jerome was drafted into the army and served in counterintelligence. After the end of the war, he finally decides to devote himself entirely to literature. He begins to try his hand at creating short stories, which are successfully published in several magazines.

But, of course, Salinger’s famous book “The Catcher in the Rye” brought him special fame on a truly global scale. This novel, on which the writer worked hard for about ten years, considering it the main work of his life, was published in 1951 and was enthusiastically received by both critics and professional writers, as well as a wide audience.

This touching and slightly sad story tells about the growing up and spiritual quest of sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, who goes through such trials as the loss of a loved one, first love, disappointment in his childhood dreams, a complete lack of support in life and necessary moral guidelines. According to critics, this novel was based on life circumstances that happened in the life of Salinger himself. It quite reliably depicts his relationship with his family, in particular with his father, and the disappointment of the author, who himself went through many elite schools, in such educational institutions. Of course, this story cannot be called completely true and autobiographical. But the author undoubtedly endowed his hero Holden with many of the traits inherent in Salinger himself.

Such a frank, subtle and deep book could not fail to impress readers. Tens and hundreds of thousands of young people, first only in America, and then throughout the world, read this novel, recognizing their own feelings, sensations and emotions in the experiences of Holden Caulfield. The book “The Catcher in the Rye” has become truly iconic and has had a huge influence on more than one generation of young readers.

By the time the novel became widely known, Salinger also had about three dozen short stories and short stories that were published in periodicals and were published as a separate collection. By this point, the writer, completely disillusioned with life, began to take an active interest in Zen Buddhism. He preferred to retire to his home, refused to communicate with journalists and became a real recluse. Despite the fact that Salinger continued to write, he no longer wanted to publish his works, and also imposed a ban on reprinting books that had already been published. This period of loneliness and seclusion lasted for decades (from 1965 until the writer’s death). In the last years of his life, Salinger had virtually no contact with the outside world, even with his family. He lived completely alone behind the high fence of his mansion in New Hampshire and practiced yoga and other spiritual practices.

JEROME SALINGER

Jerome David Salinger elevated to the rank of art the ability to create a mysterious image for himself, withdrawing from the world, living as a recluse and not coming into contact with anyone. (Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes performed the same clever trick in their time.) Judging solely by volume, Salinger's contribution to literature is small. But few authors can be put on the same level as this man, who once called the very fact of publishing his works “a terrible invasion of my privacy.” But many writers are ready to rip someone’s throat out for such interference.

His signature novel, of course, is The Catcher in the Rye, a masterful portrait of teenage alienation that still resonates with disgruntled high school students and other depressives to this day. The book's main character, Holden Caulfield (named after actors William Holden and Joan Caulfield), was a reflection of Salinger himself, only instead of the military academy where the writer himself studied, a prestigious school was depicted. The caustic, ironic book—a list of everything Salinger hated, presented in novel form—became a platform for the vulnerable and downtrodden Jewish author to take retrospective revenge on everyone who made him feel like a failure. Having created several more books that were accepted with a bang during the Eisenhower era - an era when inability to live became almost a cult - "with a bang", Salinger began to live in solitude and stopped writing.

Was this flight from fame the product of painful vulnerability? In the years following the publication of The Catcher in the Rye, a number of literary figures, such as John Updike, Alfred Kazin and Leslie Fidper, did not hesitate to trash the book. Joan Didion called his work "fake" and criticized Salinger's way of "flattering the mediocrity that lies within each reader, his tendency to give instructions on how to live." Maybe all this was dictated by envy. In the end, Salinger made much more money and received much more public attention than any of the spiteful critics. However, some suspect that criticism has nothing to do with it. Perhaps Salinger was simply afraid that he would never be able to reach his former heights in his writing. However, regardless of the reasons, he became one of the most famous recluses in the world.

When Salinger's name does come up, it is usually in connection with some controversial actions.

In the early 1970s, he began an affair with eighteen-year-old aspiring writer Joyce Maynard, and nine months later he unceremoniously threw her out onto the street. Maynard took brutal revenge on Salinger by auctioning off his love letters and writing a scandalous book about their relationship. In 2000, Salinger's daughter Margaret also wrote a memoir, portraying her father in a very unflattering way. In her view, the man who captivated a generation of readers with his tales of growing up was actually a sullen disciplinarian who drank his own urine and perpetuated long-outdated racial prejudices gleaned from old Hollywood movies. “To my father, all people whose first language was Spanish were either Puerto Rican washerwomen,” she wrote, “or toothless, grinning types who looked like gypsies from Marx Brothers films.” When Margaret chose a black man as her husband, Salinger almost got sick of it. He warned his daughter that he had watched a film in which a white woman married a black musician, and the consequences of this marriage were disastrous.

Secluded in his New Hampshire possessions, Salinger continued to write. They say that he had several room-sized safes left in his house, filled with finished or in-progress manuscripts. From time to time, Salinger let it slip that he might be about to release a new novel, but he always managed to change his mind. He categorically refused to sell the rights to film adaptations of his works and did not allow any reworkings or sequels that were not his own to proceed. There seem to be lines in Salinger's will prohibiting the making of films based on his books even after the death of the author.

Of course, he did not lack money. The Catcher in the Rye sells over 250,000 copies each year, inspiring teenage rebels around the world. There is some bitter irony in this, but Salinger's greatest work also became a reference book for lone psychos and potential homicidal maniacs. At the time of his arrest, Mark David Chapman, who shot John Lennon in December 1980, was clutching a tattered copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman later stated that Holden Caulfield inspired him to kill. If Hollywood wants viewers to immediately recognize a weirdo in a hero (take, for example, the confused paranoid man in the movie “Conspiracy Theory” played by Mel Gibson), he always has “The Catcher in the Rye” on his shelf. “I'm afraid of the people who like The Catcher in the Rye,” sang the 1991 indie rock band Too Much Joy. Can we blame them for this?

DANCING ON DECK

The world's most famous hermit once famously danced the Latin American conga dance. In 1941, Salinger was in charge of entertainment aboard the Kungsholm, a luxury Swedish liner that carried wealthy passengers to the West Indies. He later used his experience in the short story "Teddy", which takes place on an ocean liner.

When Salinger was in his twenties, he dated Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. Salinger thought they were a wonderful couple, but then a funny little man in a bowler hat passed him at the turn. Charlie Chaplin turned Una's head, and they soon got married, despite the thirty-six years age difference. An angry Salinger wrote Una an angry and poisonous letter, outlining in sordid detail how he imagined her wedding night with Chaplin.

I MARRIED A NAZI

So talk about complexes! Salinger was always ashamed of his Jewish origin, and he endowed many of his literary offspring with this same trait. Moreover, Salinger may be the only Jew who of his own free will married a Nazi. This happened in the final months of World War II, when Salinger was serving as a counterintelligence officer in occupied Germany. His duties included interrogating minor fascist officials. Salinger managed to fall in love with one of them - a woman named Sylvia (or Saliva, as Salinger called her). It cannot be said that Salinger’s American relatives accepted the outspoken anti-Semite Sylvia with open arms. Their union lasted only a few months, after which Sylvia sailed back to the Fatherland.

HE WOULD ALSO SAY THAT I SHOULD SHOOT YOU

When The Catcher in the Rye was chosen as book of the month in 1951, the organizers of this prestigious award ran into problems because of the book's vague title. The president of the club that presented the prize turned to the writer with a request to name the book something else,

Salinger refused icily. "Holden Caulfield," he explained, "wouldn't like it."

WOULD YOU WANT A MUG OF PI...?

According to his daughter Margaret, Salinger drank his own urine. Not for pleasure, of course, but for medical purposes. In India, urine therapy has been practiced for more than five thousand years, and many believe that it has significant healing effects. You can also whiten your teeth with it.

PATHOLOGICAL HOMEOPATHIST

Urine therapy was not the only branch of traditional medicine that interested Salinger. Over the years, he was interested in Scientology, homeopathy, acupuncture and the teachings of the Church of Christ sect. He set up a solarium in the outbuilding with metal reflectors and fried himself there until his skin turned dark brown. When he switched to a macrobiotic diet, his face took on a frightening green hue, and his breath, according to his household, stank disgustingly.

It wasn’t enough for him to try alternative treatment methods on himself. When one of his children happened to get sick, Salinger flew into a rage and refused to rest until he found the homeopathic remedy needed specifically for this illness. He could spend hours rummaging through books on alternative medicine, looking for a cure for a simple runny nose.

When it came to acupuncture, “Doctor” Salinger had some pretty crazy methods. He avoided regular needles, preferring thick wooden dowels (like the ones used to hold IKEA furniture together). This caused terrible suffering to the patients. His daughter Margaret describes the experience as “like someone pushing a dull pencil under your skin.” Salinger tried to cure his son Matthew's cold by pressing one of his magic dowels against the child's knuckles. The boy screamed in pain, but he could not make his father feel sorry for him. “You, your mother and sister have the lowest pain threshold I have ever seen,” Salinger Sr. grumbled. “You’re screaming as if you were hit by shrapnel!” It is not surprising that the children tried to hide their ailments from their dear daddy.

FROG IN A BOX

ACCORDING TO HIS DAUGHTER MARGARET, JEROME DAVID SALINGER DRINKED HIS OWN URINE (SUGGESTEDLY FOR MEDICAL PURPOSES).

THE POWER OF CHAT

Salinger's spiritual quest resembled a box of assorted chocolates. Born into a Jewish family, he tried Zen Buddhism, Vedic Hinduism and even charismatic Christianity. Having visited a house of worship in New York, he was so impressed that, upon returning to New Hampshire, he began to speak different languages. His daughter once found him in the sunbathing annex falling into glossolalia (this is the utterance of incomprehensible, meaningless sounds in a state of religious ecstasy; in some religious movements it is believed that in this way a person can talk to God in a language that is incomprehensible to him).

SEE YOU IN COURT!

Salinger fiercely defended his privacy, often filing lawsuits to deter potential biographers. In 1988, he won a lawsuit with Ian Hamilton and ordered him not to include fragments of his (Salinger's) private correspondence in his biography. When Iranian filmmakers started a film adaptation of Franny and Zooey in 1998, which was not approved by the author, Salinger set his lawyers on them. Even his threat to sue was usually enough for the other side to abandon their intentions. Movie characters such as Terrence Mann in Field of Dreams, played by James Earl Jones, and William Forrester, played by Sean Connery in Finding Forrester, were originally based on Salinger but were changed during filming to avoid any confusion. there were accusations.

MY HERO

Salinger's son Matthew Salinger played the super-patriot and superhero Captain America in the film of the same name in 1990.

JACK KEROUAC

If you ask people to name a few important facts about Kerouac, few will describe him as: a) a native of French Canada; b) a person with conservative political views; c) an exemplary student. But the author of the cult novel On the Road was just that, not to mention the fact that he was an ardent baseball fan who enjoyed his articles about Red Sox games, perhaps even more than the glory of the founder of the beat movement.

Jack Kerouac was born Jean-Louis Lebri de Kerouac in 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, the son of a printing worker from Quebec. Until the age of five, he did not speak a word of English, and only mastered the language properly as a teenager. As a child, he entertained himself with fictional descriptions of various sporting events. Kerouac attended New York's Horace Mann School, an elite institution whose famous alumni included lawyer Roy Cohn, who fought Communist government agents, tennis star and transsexual Renee Richards, and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

Kerouac's success in football earned him admission to Columbia University, where he boasted of his truancy record. Maybe he would have become an ordinary dull athlete if he had not broken his leg in the second game. Kerouac dropped out of school and became a vagabond and writer. Years of traveling and keeping diaries, where he recorded his travel impressions, resulted in a legendary writing marathon in April 1951, during which the novel “On the Road” was born. Kerouac later claimed that he produced a 175,000-word manuscript in just three weeks, printed on a huge roll of teletype paper. Most modern researchers agree that the famous “Kerouac scroll” was not written “out of my head”, but was compiled from diary entries over several years. But, be that as it may, the story of his wanderings with his hippie friends across America and Mexico instantly became the bible for the newly born generation of beatniks.

Less than a year later, Kerouac appeared on Steve Allen's popular television show, where he read excerpts from his main work to jazz accompaniment. Unfortunately, this was one of Kerouac's few intelligible performances during this period. More often than not, he arrived drunk or indulged in long-winded, irrelevant discussions about Buddhism and the true essence of genius. He quickly developed detractors in the highest literary circles, including Truman Capote, who once described Kerouac's novel as: “This is not art. This is typing on a typewriter.” It is worth noting that Kerouac, who is often associated with spontaneous, spontaneous writing, actually worked painstakingly on his manuscripts, editing them to make them more attractive to publishers and more promising in terms of sales. Why not? After all, this was the only way he could earn enough money to buy drinks.

Already a chronic alcoholic, in recent years Kerouac drank to the point of complete stupor. Over the years, he wrote almost nothing, moved from place to place several times (always with his mother) and became increasingly drawn to Catholicism. He died on October 21, 1969, of a massive gastric hemorrhage with a pen and notepad in his hands.

RIGHT DRIVE!

The most radical of the beatniks would probably be shocked if they learned that the father of their movement adhered to conservative views in politics. A devout Catholic, Kerouac despised hippies and supported the Vietnam War. When, at one party in the late 1960s, one of the guests wrapped himself in an American flag like a robe, Kerouac found it necessary to take the flag, carefully fold it and put it away. And one of his closest friends was William F. Buckley, a right-wing writer and journalist, founder of the political magazine National Review.

BLACK LIGHTNING LIKE...

As we already mentioned, Kerouac was a chronic alcoholic. His favorite drink was Thunderbird, an inexpensive fortified wine, the choice of all poor drinkers.

BASEBALL BOOM

Kerouac's greatest literary achievement is On the Road, but his greatest invention was undoubtedly the Fantasy Baseball League. Long before online games and virtual sports betting took over the world, the founder of the beat movement had fun the old fashioned way: with the help of cards and pieces of colored paper.

He came up with the Fantastic League as a child in Lowell, and as an adult he often mentioned it in his diaries, meaning it became his lifelong passion. The game used cards and calculations, and was somewhat reminiscent of later popular board games, although Kerouac's version was much more complex and clever. Divided into six imaginary teams, his league was populated by both real-life characters like Pancho Villa and Lou Gehrig and fictional players like Homer Landry, Sarley Custer and Louis Tercerero. Kerouac appointed himself manager of the Pittsburgh Plymouths team.

The "games" were played in real time using marbles, toothpicks and erasers, which Kerouac threw at a target forty feet away. As a seasoned bookmaker, Kerouac recorded the performance of each player in detail. He kept a record of the results, distributed fees, assigned rewards to players, and even kept financial statistics for each team. He also published a newsletter called "Jack Lewis' Baseball Gossip" and "Balls of the Day" flyers, which summarized the day's games, announced game times, and listed the league's best players. Some of his writings about games from that time appear in his collection of early works, “On Top of Underwood.” The rest, unfortunately, has sunk into baseball oblivion.

ON THE ROAD AND IN THE BINGE

In 1958, shortly after his literary triumph, Kerouac and his mother moved to Northport, a small seaside town in the North Shore region on the northern coast of Long Island. Local residents still remember him fondly - as a city drunkard. He was often seen wandering down the street barefoot or in slippers, he was drunk and dragging a trolley bag behind him, as if he was going to the store to buy vegetables. In reality, of all the “provisions” he only needed alcohol. He always had a bottle of Canadian Club whiskey in his briefcase - in case he suddenly felt the urge to wet his throat. In the mornings, after heavy libations, he could often be found sleeping across abandoned tram tracks.

Kerouac's other favorite haunts were the local pub and liquor store, where he would take a mid-day nap. He often visited the city library, but refused to enter the building and waited outside for the librarians to bring him the books he needed. Kerouac was also known for never mowing his front lawn and for being a terrible car driver (fortunately, he didn't need to go anywhere very often). He usually spent his evenings at home, playing in his fictional baseball league or listening to excerpts of Catholic Masses on a tape recorder. From time to time one of his fans would visit him (Northport was only an hour away from New York). Not knowing what to do with his growing fame, Kerouac preferred to get his guests drunk and give them an impromptu tour of the abandoned houses of the North Shore.

In 1964, Kerouac left Northport and moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. He spent his last night in North Port getting drunk and singing along to Mel Torme records as usual. He was later found sleeping in a field several miles outside of town.

THIS IS A NAKED BREAKFAST - NAKED, NOT FREE!

Kerouac and William Burroughs had a long-term friendship, however, since the mid-1950s, relations cooled somewhat - mainly because of Kerouac's love for freebies. While staying at Burroughs' house, he never paid for anything and shamelessly ate out his friend. The two icons of the beat generation haven't spoken in over a decade. Subsequently, they met only once, in 1968, when Kerouac appeared on the talk show “Hot Line,” hosted by his old friend William F. Buckley. Kerouac was drunk, and Burroughs tried to persuade him to leave and not disgrace himself. However, Kerouac ignored his words and continued to make himself a laughing stock on television.

DURING THE YEARS JACK KEROUAC SPENT IN NORTHPORT, THE WRITER WAS OFTEN SEEN WALKING AROUND THE STREETS BAREFOOT. HE WAS DEAD DRUNK AND DRAGING A TROLLEY BAG.

VALUABLE SOUVENIR

The first 1,000 fans to pass through the stadium's turnstiles on August 21, 2003, for a baseball game between the Lowell Spinners and the Williamsport Crosscutters of the New York-Pennsylvania League had a unique opportunity to purchase a Jack Kerouac bobble-head figurine. The doll, made of plastic and rubber, depicted the young Kerouac as he was during his years in Lowell. He has a backpack over his shoulders, a pen and a notepad in his hands, and he is standing on the book “On the Road.”

As a result of this unusual action, widely covered in the press (including articles in Sports Illustrated and The New York Times), more than ten thousand dollars were received into the Jack Kerouac research fund. In fact, the idea came to the organizers at the last moment as a replacement for the original plan (to spread a real roll with the manuscript of “On the Road” on the playing field), which was rejected by Kerouac’s heirs. One of the Kerouac figurines is kept in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

THIS IS SUCH A DEPPOSITION!

Who would have thought that Jack Sparrow was such a Jack Kerouac fan? In 1991, actor Johnny Depp purchased over $50,000 worth of items from Kerouac's executors. Among the purchases were a Kerouac trench coat worth $15,000, a suitcase worth $10,000, one of the writer's old travel bags worth $5,000, a turtleneck worth $2,000 (we hope it was at least washed first) and a waterproof hat worth $3,000 (which is quite reasonable: who cares? need a raincoat without a waterproof hat?), a tweed coat for $10,000, a letter from Kerouac to beatnik friend Neal Cassady for $5,000, and a canceled liquor store bill for $350.

WHO WEARED KHAKI?

In an eternal desire to reach the largest possible consumer audience, including hippies, the Gap youth clothing store chain launched an advertising campaign on the theme of beatnikism in the early 1990s. The ad featured a photograph of Kerouac in twill pants and a plain shirt, with the slogan "Kerouac Wore Khaki" printed underneath. Many radical fans of Kerouac were outraged by the posthumous exploitation of his image. (Banana Ripa Bleak, a chain affiliated with Gap, was selling a Kerouac bomber for $70 around the same time.) In protest, a group of Chicago poets produced a parody ad, “Hitler Wore Khakis,” where, naturally, the fascist dictator was depicted. Hundreds of flyers were secretly placed in Gap stores throughout the Windy City. Since then, advertisers have preferred not to mess with the beatniks.