JD Salinger is often revered as the voice of his generation and many generations to come…we chatted with him about his most famous work, privacy, war, writing and more.

Young Adult Mag: What inspired The Catcher In The Rye?

JD Salinger: My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book … It was a great relief telling people about it.

YA: You’re notoriously private. Why?

JDS: What can be gained from over sharing? Nothing.

YA: What event has had the biggest influence over your writing?

JDS: World War II without a doubt. It’s painful and awful and terrible and monstrous…and the only way I could find to start to make sense of it was to continue to write.

YA: You’ve had great success with both short stories and novels…do you have a preference?

JDS: Writing is writing is writing. I think that novels are just longer versions of short stories so to aim to perfect one is the get better at both.

YA: Much has been made of the first person narration in Catcher. Why did you decide to write the book that way?

JDS: As I said, it was a story that came from me of me…It made the most sense.