News article #8

World famous author, 89, dies

The creator of ”The Catcher in the Rye”

By Joel Bertilsson

Jerome David Salinger, 89, passed away Sunday morning at his home in Cornish, due to a stroke.
Salinger, which withdrew himself from public exposure years ago, was found dead in his bed early on the Sunday morning. The death was due to natural causes and no crime is suspected, the local police reports.
Salinger was mostly known as the author of ”The Catcher in the Rye”. This widely known, bestselling novel was published in 1951 and has sold more than 65 million copies.

Salinger was born and raised on Manhattan, New York. His family was Jewish and he only had one sibling, his sister Doris. He left the home early for various schools to get away from his overprotecting parents.
During the early 1940s Salinger began to write short stories. Many of these were later published in different newspapers and magazines.

In 1945 he was sent to Germany to serve in World War II. There he met a French girl named Sylvia, who he later married. The marriage only lasted a couple of months and Salinger returned to the United States.
The marriage with Sylvia was only the first out of three. In 1955 he married the Radcliff student Claire Douglas. They had two kids, Margret and Matt, and their marriage lasted eleven years.
22 years after the break up with Douglas, he got married again. This time with the 40 years younger nurse, Colleen O’Neill.

After the publishing of “The Catcher in the Rye” Salinger withdrew himself, more and more, from public exposure. In an attempt to get away from obtrusive journalists and media he moved to Cornish, New Hampshire. This proofed to have the opposite effect and the fascination over Salinger only grew.
The last work Salinger ever published was “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An introduction”. This book, which contained two short stories, was released in 1963 and only sold in a few hundred thousand copies.

After 1963 he only attended a few interviews before he went underground. Despite this, “The Catcher in the Rye” kept selling around 250000 copies a year and it still is. Even though Salinger is now dead, his work is more alive than ever.