Sergeant Salinger

A shattering biographical novel of J.D. Salinger in combat "Charyn skillfully breathes life into historical icons." — New Yorker J.D. Salinger, mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye , is remembered today as a reclusive misanthrope. Jerome Charyn's Salinger is a young American WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war—from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the first Allied entry into a Bavarian death camp, where corpses were piled like cordwood. After the war, interned in a Nuremberg psychiatric clinic, Salinger became enchanted with a suspected Nazi informant. They married, but not long after he brought her home to New York, the marriage collapsed. Maladjusted to civilian life, he lived like a "spook," with invisible stripes on his shoulder, the ghosts of the murdered inside his head, and stories to tell. Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, Sergeant Salinger is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations. Jerome Charyn is the author of more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Cesare: A Novel of War-Torn Berlin . He lives in New York. "J.D. Salinger, the mysterious author of The Catcher in the Rye, is remembered today as a litigious misanthrope who disowned his daughter. Jerome Charyn's Sergeant Salinger is a young WWII draftee assigned to the Counter Intelligence Corps, a band of secret soldiers who trained with the British. A rifleman and an interrogator, he witnessed all the horrors of the war--from the landing on D-Day to the relentless hand-to-hand combat in the hedgerows of Normandy, to the Battle of the Bulge, and finally to the first Allied entry into a Bavarian death camp, where corpses were piled like cordwood. After the war, interned in a Nuremberg psychiatric clinic, Salinger was bewitched by a suspected Nazi informant. They married, but not long after he brought her home to New York, the marriage collapsed. Maladjusted to civilian life, he lived like a 'spook', with invisible stripes on his shoulder and the ghosts of the murdered inside his head. Grounded in biographical fact and reimagined as only Charyn could, this is an astonishing portrait of a devastated young man on his way to becoming the mythical figure behind a novel that has marked generations."-- Provided by publisher From Publishers Weekly: One of our most anticipated literary fiction titles of fall, this novel imagines the life of J.D. Salinger during, and after, his time as a soldier. It follows one of America's most reclusive authors through his experiences in WWII where, among other things, he survives the Battle of the Bulge and helps free inmates of a concentration camp. Carrying with him in Europe the book that would become Catcher in the Rye, the young writer returns home to become a literary sensation, albeit one who is unable to shake the scars of battle. We called the novel a "literary tour de force" that "humanizes a legend." Henri-irénée Marrou ; Avec La Collaboration De A.-m. La Bonnardiére. Bibliography: P. [187]-190.