TODAY IN LITERARY HISTORY — Birthday of J. D. Salinger - January 1 Born January 1, 1919, J. D. Salinger remains one of the most influential and enigmatic figures in twentieth-century American literature. He is best known for The Catcher in the Rye (1951), a novel that captured adolescent alienation, moral confusion, and resistance to conformity with a voice that felt startlingly immediate to generations of readers. Salinger’s fiction —particularly his stories featuring the Glass family—blends spiritual inquiry, postwar disillusionment, and sharp social observation. Though his published output was relatively small, its cultural impact has been enormous. The Catcher in the Rye became both a staple of school curricula and a touchstone of youthful rebellion, even as Salinger himself grew increasingly uncomfortable with fame and public scrutiny. After serving in U.S. Army counterintelligence during World War II, including participation in the D-Day invasion and the liberation of con...
