J. D. Salinger
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50 free J. D. Salinger trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
J. D. Salinger wrote one of the most-read American novels of the twentieth century and then spent half his life making sure nobody could find him. That contrast is what makes him such good trivia: a soldier who kept writing through a war, a bestselling author who stopped publishing, and a private man whose name kept turning up in films, lawsuits and news stories anyway. This quiz covers the whole story: his New York childhood and school years, his army service in Europe, The Catcher in the Rye and its narrator Holden Caulfield, the Glass family stories, and the long retreat that followed. Along the way are the fun facts people go looking for, from the famous names who crossed his path to the screen adaptations he refused. It is pitched for curious readers as much as for English students. If you have only read the novel, the early questions are for you; the later ones reward anyone who knows the short stories.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Salinger's girlfriend Oona O'Neill, a playwright's daughter, left him in the 1940s for which film star?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin married Oona in June 1943, a month after she turned 18. Salinger had phoned her often and written her long letters before the romance ended.
Q 02Which Kevin Costner film replaced the novel's kidnapped J. D. Salinger with a fictional writer, fearing a lawsuit?
Field of Dreams
Field of Dreams turned Salinger into the reclusive Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones. In W. P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, the hero takes the real author to a ball game.
Q 03Whose killer stayed at the New York scene reading a copy of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye?
John Lennon
John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, had bought the book that same day. He sat reading it outside the Dakota building until police arrived and arrested him.
Q 04Salinger, serving with the US 4th Infantry Division, was at which Normandy beach on D-Day?
Utah
Utah Beach was only the start of Salinger's war. He went on to the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in five campaigns and rising to staff sergeant.
Q 05Salinger's son Matt became an actor and played which Marvel superhero in a 1990 film?
Captain America
Captain America is one of Matt Salinger's two best-known films, with Revenge of the Nerds. After his father died, he became an executor of the literary estate.
Q 06Which famous novelist, then a war correspondent in Paris, did Salinger arrange to meet during World War II?
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway was impressed by the young soldier's writing, and the two began corresponding. Salinger later wrote that their talks were among his few positive memories of the war.
Q 07To which New England state did Salinger retreat in 1953, living in the small town of Cornish until his death?
New Hampshire
New Hampshire gave Salinger more than half a century of seclusion. Readers and Dartmouth students still travelled to Cornish in groups, hoping to catch a glimpse of him.
Q 08The title of The Catcher in the Rye comes from Holden Caulfield mishearing a poem by which Scottish writer?
Robert Burns
Robert Burns wrote Comin' Thro' the Rye in the 1780s. Holden swaps one verb in a line of it, and his whole daydream about rescuing children grows out of that mistake.
Q 09Which French film star tried to buy the screen rights to a Salinger short story, an offer he refused?
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot was turned down even though Salinger told a friend he was tempted. He had barred all screen versions of his work after a 1949 adaptation that critics lambasted.
Q 10Which item of clothing does Holden Caulfield hand to his little sister late in The Catcher in the Rye?
A hunting hat
A hunting hat is the catcher's symbol in the novel. When Holden passes it on, one critical reading has the pair swapping roles, with his sister now the one doing the rescuing.
Q 11Which word is Holden Caulfield's signature put-down for adults and their world in The Catcher in the Rye?
Phony
Phony is Holden's verdict on people who are dishonest or fake about who they really are. The narrator owns up to plenty of duplicity himself, which is part of the joke.
Q 12In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield keeps wondering where which New York birds go during the winter?
Ducks
Ducks, and where they go in the cold, are a puzzle Holden cannot let drop. A 2005 novel has its own characters stop beside a Manhattan boat pond to ponder his question.
Q 13Which fictional Pennsylvania boarding school expels Holden Caulfield at the start of The Catcher in the Rye?
Pencey Prep
Q 21Holden Caulfield treasures which object that belonged to his late brother Allie, who covered it in poems?
A baseball mitt
A baseball mitt, left-handed and inscribed with poetry, is Holden's keepsake of Allie, who died of leukemia as a boy. Holden writes his roommate's homework essay about it.
Q 22Holden Caulfield accuses his older brother D.B., a gifted writer, of selling out by moving where?
Hollywood
Hollywood is where D.B. writes screenplays, which Holden treats as a betrayal of real talent. He still reveres his brother's writing skill, English being his own best subject.
Q 23In Holden Caulfield's daydream of being the catcher in the rye, what does he save children from?
Falling off a cliff
Pencey Prep throws Holden out after he fails every class except English. He has left other schools before, and he catches a train to New York City that same night.
Q 14What is the name of Holden Caulfield's younger sister, whom he treats to a carousel ride in Central Park?
Phoebe
Phoebe scolds Holden for getting expelled and asks whether he cares about anything. The sight of her riding the carousel in the rain is what finally makes him happy.
Q 15Which military academy, Salinger's alma mater, is widely seen as the model for Holden Caulfield's boarding school?
Valley Forge
Valley Forge is where the teenage Salinger began writing stories under the covers at night by flashlight. He also edited the literary pages of the class yearbook, Crossed Sabres.
Q 16Which actor said Salinger inspired the reclusive novelist he played in the 2000 film Finding Forrester?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery played William Forrester, who mentors a gifted sixteen-year-old from the Bronx. Film critics had drawn the comparison before the actor confirmed it.
Q 17Which animated Netflix comedy imagines Salinger faking his death and then running a television game show?
BoJack Horseman
BoJack Horseman cast Alan Arkin as the voice of Salinger in its second and third seasons. The gag runs against type: the real author spent decades shunning publicity.
Q 18Which comedian, Salinger said in the 1970s, had tried for years to land the part of Holden Caulfield?
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis had not even read the novel until he was in his thirties. Director Billy Wilder also chased the screen rights and got nowhere.
Q 19Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan in 1919 on which holiday?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day 1919 brought the family a son they nicknamed Sonny. His father traded in kosher cheese, and his only sibling was an older sister, Doris.
Q 20In Salinger's fiction, the parents of the seven Glass children are retired performers in which kind of show?
Vaudeville
Vaudeville veterans Les and Bessie Glass raised seven precocious children, who all appeared on the radio quiz show It's a Wise Child.
Falling off a cliff is the danger Holden pictures as youngsters run through the tall rye. Critics read the drop as the passage into the adult world he distrusts.
Q 24Biographer Paul Alexander likened the publicity-shy Salinger to which famously private film star?
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo was the comparison for a man who gave his final interview in 1980. As early as 1961, a Time cover story was already describing his life as that of a recluse.
Q 25By the late 1940s Salinger followed which religion so keenly that he gave his dates reading lists on it?
Zen Buddhism
Zen Buddhism was the first of many faiths Salinger explored. He moved on to Vedanta Hinduism, Kriya yoga and Christian Science, and his studies surface in stories such as Teddy.
Q 26Which English actor played the young J. D. Salinger in the 2017 biopic Rebel in the Rye?
Nicholas Hoult
Nicholas Hoult starred opposite Kevin Spacey, who played the author's writing mentor. The film was adapted from Kenneth Slawenski's biography J. D. Salinger: A Life.
Q 27Joyce Maynard left which university after her freshman year in 1972 to live with the 53-year-old Salinger?
Yale
Yale lost Maynard after a New York Times essay made her famous at 18 and Salinger wrote to warn her about fame. They exchanged 25 letters before she moved in with him.
Q 28At McBurney School the teenage Salinger managed which sports team, whose kit Holden Caulfield loses on the subway?
Fencing
Fencing was one of several McBurney pursuits for Salinger, who also wrote for the school newspaper and acted in plays. In the novel, McBurney is where Holden's team was headed.
Q 29In April 1945 Sergeant Salinger entered Kaufering IV, a subcamp of which Nazi concentration camp?
Dachau
Dachau's subcamp came near the end of five campaigns for Salinger. After Germany's defeat he checked into a civilian hospital for combat stress, avoiding an army psychiatric discharge.
Q 30A 1979 study ranked The Catcher in the Rye the second most-taught novel in US public high schools, behind which book?
Of Mice and Men
Of Mice and Men was the only novel assigned more often. The same study found Salinger's book was also the most frequently censored in the nation, and some teachers lost their jobs over it.