Salinger: The Official Book of the Acclaimed Documentary Film by David Shields and Shane Salerno (2013)

This was one of those random books that sort of fell into my lap recently, a hefty 700-page biography of one of the 20th century’s most famous celebrity recluses, J.D. Salinger. As the subtitle suggests, this book serves as a companion to the documentary film (which I’ve never seen). And I get it. While it may have been easier just to watch the documentary, I somehow enjoyed it whole lot more, being able to work my way through it as slowly as I did.

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I am a minor-league Salinger aficionado. Scratch that. I’m still playing T-ball. I read The Catcher in the Rye once while I was in college and was more focused on the language and plot than I was on trying to understand it or plumb its depths. In fact, I think I enjoyed Bob Uecker’s The Catcher in the Wry (1982) more than Salinger’s original!

What Drew Me to Read Salinger

So what drew me to this biography? I have a few reasons.

• First, because I have several of Salinger’s books on my shelf—like Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger (1953)—that I’ve contemplated reading but (up to this point) never have.
• Second, because I have a friend who, for the past 5 years, has been pestering me to read Salinger’s entire catalogue of writings, “even though they’re all about suicide.”
• And third, because I came across this book around the same time that I started reading C.S. Lewis‘ spiritual biography, A Life Observed (also published in 2013). I was intrigued to see how reading these two biographies in conjunction with each other might shed some light, one on the other. Because Lewis’ story illuminated Salinger’s far more than vice-versa, I didn’t even mention this book in my review of that. They’re just so different!

Salinger’s Appeal—and Oddities

Before I share some thoughts about those differences, first, some points about this book. I understand Salinger’s appeal to my friend and to countless other readers over the past seventy years. Authors Shields and Salerno do an excellent job of breaking the man’s life down into sizeable chunks, while maintaining a pretty constant habit of jumping ahead or back into Salinger’s history.

Seclusion

The book begins, for example, in the midst of WWII with Salinger not yet mentally harmed by the war but excited for his future as a writer. They interview many individuals who knew the man personally, people who had remained respectful of his privacy while he lived and careful not to divulge too much even after his death. They quote letters at length, especially those by some of the young (and I mean “young”) women with whom he developed intimate relationships. They also include more than a dozen face-to-face contacts that folks have had with the supposed recluse over the years, some of which went well and others less so.

In looking back on the book and the author’s life, I like how Shields and Salerno dealt with Salinger’s intentional seclusion. In noting his occasional rifts with the press and a willingness to play his “enigmatic” reputation to his advantage, they highlight how much of this was merely part of a larger plan, for Salinger to be the one celebrity who hated celebrity the most, and who most enjoyed discovering how his hatred of fame made him all the more famous. That may be an oversimplification, but it’s what I got from their descriptions.

Unpublished Works

I like how the authors emphasized Salinger’s growing body of unpublished works that, they hinted, may or may not actually exist. On several occasions, we find Salinger telling others either verbally or in letter form that he writes for himself, and there exists no need for him to share the stories he’d already written about the Glass family, because this family was his own and these stories were for no one but himself. That’s a writer’s (selfish) heart on display. He even repeats quite often how he regrets ever having put Holden Caulfield’s story (Salinger’s own story, thinly veiled) into print.

Young Girls

I was intrigued by how the authors handled Salinger’s fixation on girls as young as 14, not because of his own sexual appetite but because of the girls’ childhood innocence, a theme that permeates all his writings. While certainly it’s pretty messed up that a man in his 30s, 40s, and 50s would pursue relationships with such innocents, the fact that he wasn’t a perv or pedophile is a pretty important point to make. Having seen death and destruction in the war (including the inhumanity of a Jewish concentration camp mere hours after the Nazi’s abandoned it) and having given himself over to an Eastern religion that eschewed physical appetites (including sex), Salinger was a man far less attracted to the girls for their bodies than he was for their childish minds. It’s still weird (as is the constant foot-fetishes his literary characters have), but it’s less dangerous than it could have been.

PTSD

Most importantly, I like how the authors handle and describe the source of Salinger’s anger, distance, and depression: PTSD. Although originally called “battle fatigue,” this condition is something that was all too often ignored by the government and medical professionals post-WWII. It’s no wonder that so many soldiers returned from the war broken and distant, breaking their families and abusing drugs and alcohol with no real explanation of why. PTSD wasn’t a recognized disorder until long after the war, and Salinger was one victim out of hundreds of thousands, yet also one of very few with the voice and platform to put his disability on display (though few recognized that truth at the time). Holden Caulfield wasn’t an assassin or simply a youth desiring rebellion. He was Jerry Salinger speaking and living his trauma without knowing why.

In their closing chapter, the authors write that “War had destroyed him, created him.” These are the best six words of the book and a true summation of J.D. Salinger, his writing and his personality. It’s a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless. It’s a reality that needs to be shared more broadly, because there exist too many soldiers (and civilians) suffering from PTSD, whether diagnosed or not, who need to realize that they’re not alone. Violent or depressing thoughts and an almost manic desire for innocence and privacy are often the norm for folks such as these, and Salinger serves as their spokesman.

Rebellion

He spoke for more than just those suffering from PTSD, however, for Salinger was also considered the voice of rebellion in post-war America. This designation, though, misses the mark. Hippies and adolescents of the 50s, 60s, and 70s wanted to tear down the system, not because Salinger gave them freedom to do so, but because they themselves were confused, deranged, or plain idiotic. The adolescents were strung up on hormones, the hippies and beatniks on something far stronger. Salinger rebelled because he was mentally unstable; his readers rebelled because someone had finally given them license to do so—a license to sin. There’s a message for our society hidden in there somewhere, but I’ll leave that for another time.

J.D. Salinger Contrasted to C.S. Lewis

Reading this book in concert with A Life Observed, the spiritual biography of C.S. Lewis that I mentioned earlier, afforded me the opportunity to study the wildly divergent worldviews of these two authors and the chasm that separates them. J.D. Salinger was a godless man who eventually pursued Zen Buddhism and Vedanta (a Hindu tradition), all in an attempt to purge his physical and mental fragility with spiritual pursuits. He even dabbled in Christian Science (which reminded me of Val Kilmer’s memoir), homeopathy, and strict dietary rules for the same reasons.

C.S. Lewis also grew up as a godless man who held strictly to mental pursuits. He too suffered abuse in his boarding schools, and while it may not have led officially to PTSD, it still left scars that remained with him all his life. His pursuit of mental vigor led him first to shun anything spiritual or supernatural, but then to accept that only a spiritual and supernatural Being could stand behind this world of logic and reason. These steps led him ultimately to a logical and reasonable faith (if that’s not an oxymoron) in Jesus Christ as the true Son of God.

Both men suffered, and both men dealt with this suffering with pen-in-hand, expressing their confusion with the world as it is and trying to make their way in it. Whereas Salinger all but embraced his suffering, letting his Vedantic pursuits determine the course of his life and writings in seclusion, the world-be-damned, Lewis allowed his suffering to open him to a world of ideas, even if those ideas dismantled whatever belief system he had self-created. Salinger ultimately collapsed in on himself like a dying star, while Lewis went on to embrace his Christian faith and to become one of the most effective Christian apologists (both in fiction and non-) of the 20th century.

Both were private men, one selfishly and the other humbly. Both continued to write, one for his own amusement, the other to help lost souls find their way. Both have left a literary legacy, one of depression and suicide, the other of hope and reason. Both can be represented by a single word: one “Rebellion,” the other “Joy.”

Conclusion

When I look at these two authors through such lenses, I can’t help but wonder why this obvious contrast doesn’t affect change in people’s reading habits. Why is Salinger still so popular? Why does our world love darkness rather than light? Jesus answers these questions: “Because their deeds are evil.”

J.D. Salinger will long continue as an American cultural icon, because his writings (The Catcher in the Rye specifically) represent the worst in all of us. C.S. Lewis will also continue as a Christian cultural icon, though, because his writings (all of his apologetic works and novels specifically) represent the Joy that can dispel the worst in all of us.

I know which one I’d rather read. How about you?

©2021, 2026 E.T.