Famous for fleeing fame

Considering the extent to which J.D. Salinger withdrew from the public eye and guarded his privacy for most of his life, much is known about him, as Kenneth Slawenski proves in his 2010 biography J.D. Salinger: A Life.

Salinger wasn't always so withdrawn. As a young man he was popular with women and someone who went out for a drink with the guys. Slawenski identifies several factors that eventually led to his isolation in Cornish, N.H., and his decision to continue writing but to cease publishing his work. His experiences in Europe during World War II affected him greatly. He wasn't the only veteran who pulled back within himself after the war ended. Even on the front lines, Salinger worked on his short stories, and many of his stories, including "For Esme — With Love and Squalor," were heavily influenced by the war.

Then there was the The New Yorker, which for several years exclusively published his stories. The magazine has long emphasized the importance of the story over its author, something Salinger took to heart. Removing his photograph from The Catcher in the Rye in later editions was just one way he attempted to make himself secondary to his work.

Eventually he carried this to the extreme by writing his stories but then hiding them away. This decision was fueled by his devotion to Zen Buddhism and meditation. Prayer, Slawenski writes, became his primary ambition. The popularity of his books provided him with enough income to live on and support his family, but as a virtual hermit, especially after his wife (the second of three and the mother of his children) left him, he didn't need much money.

Yet for someone who tried to put his work ahead of himself, Salinger couldn't stop putting himself and his beliefs front and center in that work. His characters, from Holden Caulfield to Buddy Glass, speak for him, thus giving a biographer plenty to work with. Slawenski discusses in detail every published story. Many of these stories Salinger refused to have reprinted and thus are difficult for fans to find.

The writer's life intersected with those of other famous people in surprising ways. Salinger's first love, the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, married Charlie Chaplin instead, During the war, Salinger would sometimes slip away to compare notes about writing with war correspondent Ernest Hemingway. His best friend in Cornish was the esteemed Judge Learned Hand. Jackie Kennedy once called him on the phone, trying to persuade him to come to the White House.

The irony of Salinger's withdrawal from the world is that it made him, not his fiction, the public's primary focus. Any Salinger sighting became news.

Salinger died just as Slawenski was wrapping up this biography. This was fortunate for the biographer in that it allowed him to tell a more complete story, but it also saved him, an obvious Salinger fan, from becoming another Salinger enemy, yet another person invading the privacy of someone who had had enough of fame and just wanted to be left alone.