The Influence of Chinese and Japanese Literature on J. D. Salinger’s Philosophy of Nature

Abstract

Chapter Three begins with analysis of the function of the American West in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). The chapter goes on to reveal that Salinger’s literary depictions of Nature are significantly informed by the Americanised translations of Chinese and Japanese philosophical texts that he was studying from as early as 1946. The chapter uncovers the sources of translated Taoism to which Salinger was exposed, revealing that the translators Salinger mentions by name in his literary fiction all markedly foreground the role of Nature in their ‘American versions’ of classical Chinese and Japanese texts. Chapter Three then applies this research in close readings of two of Salinger’s later long stories, ‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters’ (1955) and ‘Seymour: An Introduction’ (1959), and offers a new reading of The Catcher in the Rye. These ecocritical readings expose the substantial influence of the ‘American versions’ of Taoist texts that Salinger studied on his literary depictions of an infinite and ecological Nature.