J. D. Salinger has become as famous for his reclusive nature as for his literary work. Before being drafted to serve in World War II, however, Salinger worked aboard a Swedish ocean liner cruising the Caribbean. His job? Headline entertainer!
[After the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, Salinger retreated to the woods where he reportedly continued writing. Despite rumors of a room-sized safe filled with manuscripts, however, Salinger did not publish anything after the early 1960s. "Publishing," he remarked during a rare interview in 1974, "is a terrible invasion of my privacy."]
[After Mark David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon in New York in 1980, he was found to be carrying a copy of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. The book also obsesses Mel Gibson's paranoid character in the film Conspiracy Theory. In the novel Shoeless Joe -- upon which the 1989 hit movie Field of Dreams was based -- J. D. Salinger is "kidnapped" by the hero, Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella. When Salinger threatened to sue, he was replaced in the film by a fictitious writer named Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones).]
Sources
M. Driscoll, ed., 5087 Trivia Questions & Answers; The New Yorker, 2004-06-14;
