Robin in the Rye

From Andrew Makes Comics, Robin the Boy Wonder meets Catcher in the Rye...

http://andrewmakescomics.tumblr.com/post/4423845383/the-lunts-oh-marvelous

'Catcher in the Rye' author's unpublished work

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/2010/01/29/2010-01-29_whats_in_jd_salingers_safe_mystery_shrouds_catcher_in_the_rye_authors_unpublishe.html

Mystery shrouds 'Catcher in the Rye' author's unpublished work
By Anjali Khosla Mullany
Daily News Writer
Friday, January 29th 2010

With the death of J.D. Salinger, the world has lost one of the greatest - and most publicity-shy - authors of the 20th century.

Salinger's passing has, however, caused many of his admirers to wonder if they will soon be gaining access to a treasure trove of his unpublished works.

Salinger, who is most famous for his quintessential New York novel "The Catcher in the Rye," died yesterday in New Hampshire.

Unhappy with the fame that met his literary success, Salinger spent most of his life out of the public eye, and had not published new work in the decades preceding his death.

Only four of his books were ever published - "The Catcher in the Rye;" "Nine Stories;" "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction" and "Franny and Zooey."

"Hapworth 16, 1924," an epistolary novella written from the perspective of one of Salinger's most famous characters, Seymour Glass, was published in The New Yorker in 1964.

Since the 1990s, publication of a book reissue of the manuscript has been periodically postponed or cancelled. It seems likely that Salinger continued to write after his withdrawal from the public eye.

In rare interviews with the New York Times and the Boston Globe, he said that he had not given up writing. He told the Globe in 1980, "I love to write, and I assure you I write regularly."

As he had told the New York Times in 1974, "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

Salinger fans want to know if his unpublished works have been preserved after his death, and if the works will be made available to the public.

A representative at Salinger's literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, told the Daily News that the agency has "no plans at this time" to release any of his unpublished work, or to re-release "Hapworth 16, 1924."

For now, the world will have to continue to wait and see if new Salinger works will be published.

J.D. Salinger: "Keep Your Hands Off My Legacy"

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1957865,00.html

J.D. Salinger: "Keep Your Hands Off My Legacy"
Andrea Sachs
Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010

J.D. Salinger may have hated visitors, but he sure loved lawyers. The famously reclusive author fended off all attempts by others to adapt his writings, particularly his masterwork, Catcher in the Rye. He even said "no" to Steven Spielberg regarding a film version of his classic novel. But now that the elusive Salinger is gone, what will happen to his iron-fisted control over his writings?

Precious little, say legal experts. If Salinger had the foresight to invite a good estate planner to Cornish, New Hampshire, it's likely that he will rule his literary empire from the grave. "Legally, his death should have no significance at all, " says Richard Dannay, an intellectual property lawyer in New York City. "His works are in copyright, and remain in copyright."

Those copyrights pass to his estate, say lawyers, and Salinger may have left detailed directions about how to proceed. If his extraordinarily private style held true in his will-making, would-be adapters of the Salinger oeuvre are out of luck. "If he says that he doesn't want a revised work, or a secondary work or a derivative work, or he doesn't want anything related to Catcher in the Rye licensed, then whoever is managing his estate would be bound by that, " says Jon Tandler, a publishing lawyer in Denver. "He can say, 'Thou shall not create a sequel.'"

That's just what a Swedish author calling himself J.D. California (real name: Fredrik Colting) tried to do, in a book named 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. But just before his death, the ever-vigilant Salinger sent his lawyers after California and his tiny publisher, Windupbird Publishing, suing them in June in federal court in Manhattan. The judge, Deborah Batts, sided with Salinger, indefinitely banning the publication of the book in this country. (It had been published in Britain.) The judge rejected the argument that the book was a parody, which would have been legally permissible. The judge's ruling has been appealed to the Second Circuit, where the case is still pending.

Jessie Beeber, an attorney for Colting and his publisher, says her clients will persist in their appeal. But, she adds, "We don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of the lawsuit right now. We think Mr. Salinger should have an opportunity to be laid to rest in peace, and our thoughts are with his family. We all just really appreciate the effect and influence Salinger and his works have had on our society."

Of course, Salinger's executor or heirs could try to slip around the author's wishes. But, so far, the late author's partisans would seem to have nothing to worry about in that regard. The Salinger ranks are holding tight, albeit as quietly as their famous client. Marcia Paul, the New York City lawyer who represented Salinger in the 60 Years Later case, had nothing to say when contacted. "I really don't have any comment about anything," she maintained. Likewise, his agent, Phyllis Westberg, is a woman of few words: "J.D. Salinger books will stay in print. I have no further comment."

Will stay in print, indeed. With Catcher required reading in every English department in America, sales are only likely to increase in the wake of the author's death. It has already sold a staggering 35 million copies worldwide, 59 years after its publication in 1951.

But even J.D. Salinger isn't above the law. In the future, Catcher in the Rye and his handful of short stories will have to go into the public domain, where they're open game. But don't hold your breath. That will be in 2080. Is that Holden Caufield we hear snickering?

Author Jay McInerney on J.D. Salinger

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2010/01/29/author-jay-mcinerney-on-j-d-salinger/

Jan 29, 2010
Author Jay McInerney on J.D. Salinger
Keith Staskiewicz

The death of J.D. Salinger yesterday has had reverberations across the landscape of modern American literature. Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life, gives EW his take on the author’s legacy.

“When I heard about Salinger’s death yesterday I realized I hadn’t thought about him in quite a while. He left the stage a long time ago and his influence is so pervasive that it’s easy to forget how different the cultural landscape would probably be if he’d never come along. Like Mark Twain, whom he mimicked in the opening line of Catcher in the Rye, he injected a new slangy colloquial tone into our literature. It’s impossible to imagine the work of Philip Roth or John Updike without his influence. Several generations later, writers like David Foster Wallace and Dave Eggers still seemed to be channeling Holden.

“Twenty-six years ago, when I published my first novel, more than a few reviewers remarked on my indebtedness to Salinger. Some commentators went so far as to suggest that my publisher had deliberately mimicked the cover art of the paperback edition of Catcher. I wasn’t necessarily displeased but I was baffled; back in 1984, it had been years since I’d read Salinger or really thought about him. In graduate school, we weren’t reading or discussing Franny and Zooey and I wasn’t remotely conscious of any influence when I was writing Bright Lights, Big City. I’d read Salinger in high school. I said as much in interviews. I’d point to what I thought of as more obvious influences like Hunter S. Thompson and Raymond Carver without stopping to consider the extent to which they were influenced by Salinger. I guess I was writing under the influence of Salinger, whether or not I was conscious of it. He’s the most influential American writer since Hemingway.

“As for the purported trove of fiction, I’m skeptical. Not of its existence, but of its quality. Anyone who’s read “Seymour: An Introduction” or most especially his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924” will wonder just how readable his later fiction is. “Hapworth” is a rambling, self referential, improbable letter home written by an alleged seven year old at camp. By the time he wrote it, Salinger seems to have decided to dispense with most of the niceties of storytelling, and to be talking to himself more rather than to the readers of Catcher in the Rye. I suspect we are going to be disappointed, but I would love to be proven wrong.”

Great Quotes: Catcher in the Rye

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap..."

RIP Salinger, and thank you for Holden Caulfield and the greatest novel ever written!
Chris H

J.D. Salinger, ’The Catcher in the Rye’ Author, Dies

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-28/j-d-salinger-the-catcher-in-the-rye-author-dies-at-91.html

J.D. Salinger, ’The Catcher in the Rye’ Author, Dies at 91
January 28, 2010
By Nancy Moran

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author whose 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” captured the pain of teenage angst and became a fixture of U.S. high school English courses, died today. He was 91.

Salinger’s son, speaking on behalf of the family and through the Harold Ober literary agency, said the author died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire.

Salinger was known almost as much for his hermitic lifestyle as his only full-length novel and its emblematic protagonist, Holden Caulfield. In 1953, he withdrew to a farm in rural Cornish, New Hampshire, and limited his contact with the literary world. He hadn’t published a story since 1965.

“He was famous for not wanting to be famous,” wrote the late British biographer Ian Hamilton in his 1988 book, “In Search of J.D. Salinger.”

Still, fans and journalists sought out Salinger over the decades in letters and trips to New Hampshire. His last-known interview was in 1980 with Betty Eppes, a reporter for the Baton Rouge Advocate whose quest to meet the author was turned into a feature for the Paris Review.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” told in the slang-filled narrative of the troubled 16-year-old prep-school student Caulfield, turned Salinger into an American literary star. The novel marked a break from fictional depictions of youth that eschewed themes of self, sexuality and alienation and is credited with jump-starting the so-called Beat Generation of writers including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.

Best Seller

Mark David Chapman was carrying a copy of the book when he shot and killed Beatle John Lennon outside the singer’s Manhattan residence, the Dakota, in December 1980.

Salinger published more than two dozen short stories and novellas, but none gained the critical acclaim of “The Catcher in the Rye.” The book remains in the top 10 of best-selling works of classic fiction on Amazon.com’s Web site.

Salinger’s plan in the late 1990s to turn his last published work, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” from a 1965 edition of the New Yorker magazine, into book form never materialized.

Jerome David Salinger was born on New Year’s Day, 1919, in New York, the only son of a food importer, Solomon Salinger. His mother, Miriam, was of Scotch-Irish decent and he had an older sister, Doris.

In 1934, Salinger was enrolled in Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, by his father after having spent two years at the private McBurney School in Manhattan. He was an average student, a member of the school’s drama club and editor of the class of 1936’s yearbook, according to Hamilton. He later studied at New York University.

Learning to Write

After traveling to Europe to learn his father’s business, he attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, and took an evening writing course at Columbia University in New York. He never received a degree.

His first work, “The Young Folks,” a vignette of awkward young adults at a party, appeared in 1940 in Story magazine, which was published by Columbia instructor and editor Whit Burnett.

He dated Oona O’Neill, the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neill, in the early 1940s. Their relationship ended when O’Neill moved to Los Angeles and married Charlie Chaplin.

Salinger entered the U.S. Army during World War II and was made a staff sergeant before joining the Counter Intelligence Corps. His infantry regiment landed on Utah Beach on “D-Day,” June 6, 1944, and he fought in the Battle of the Bulge. While with his regiment in Paris, he met Ernest Hemingway.

Effects of War

At war’s end, he was hospitalized for stress in Germany. After being discharged in November 1945, he remained in the country for six months as a civilian contractor, according to Hamilton.

His wartime experience provided the background for several of his fictional characters, including the psychologically scarred American soldier and narrator of his 1950 story “For Esme--with Love and Squalor.”

Little is known about Salinger’s first marriage, believed to be to a European woman he met while in the service. He had two children, Margaret Ann and Matthew, by second wife Claire Douglas, a 19-year-old Radcliffe student he married in the mid- 1950s. They divorced in 1967.

In 1972, Salinger wrote to 18-year-old author Joyce Maynard after reading her front-page New York Times Magazine article, “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life,” an account of coming of age in the 1960s. Maynard dropped out of Yale University to move in with the 53-year-old writer, whom she affectionately called “Jerry.”

‘Moody and Cranky’

In 1998, she published “At Home in the World,” a memoir of their 10-month relationship before he sent her away when she sought to have a baby. Maynard described Salinger, who had been influenced by Zen Buddhism and Hinduism, as consumed with yoga, meditation, and a strict diet of whole grains and vegetables. She also said he could be “moody and cranky” and critical of her “worldly” habits, including her desire to publish and give interviews.

A year later she auctioned off his letters at Sotheby’s for more than $156,000 to help pay for her children’s college education. The successful bidder, software publisher Peter Norton, offered to return the letters to Salinger.

Salinger was married a third time to Colleen O’Neill, a woman he met in New Hampshire, in the late 1980s.

The majority of Salinger’s stories surrounded the fictional Caulfield and Glass families. “I’m Crazy,” published in Collier’s in 1945 and 1946’s “Slight Rebellion Off Madison,” his New Yorker debut, introduced the character of Holden Caulfield. Two years later, the New Yorker published “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” in which World War II veteran Seymour Glass commits suicide in a Florida hotel room while his wife is asleep.

Prolific Period

Salinger’s stories also appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle and Esquire magazines.

His 1948 wartime romance, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” was made into the 1949 movie “My Foolish Heart,” starring Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward. Afterwards, Salinger vowed never to let another of his works be turned into a film.

In 1953, he published “Nine Stories,” a collection that included “Bananafish” and other stories from the New Yorker. “Franny and Zooey” combined separate stories about the youngest of the seven Glass siblings into book form in 1961. “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” published in 1963, combined two New Yorker stories and is narrated by Seymour’s brother, Buddy.

Holden Caulfield’s Descent

In 1965, the New Yorker published “Hapworth 16, 1924,” with a seven-year-old Seymour Glass writing a letter home from summer camp.

“The Catcher in the Rye,” which took its title from the Robert Burns’s poem “Comin’ Thro the Rye,” follows Caulfield’s descent into depression and institutionalization while fantasizing about catching and preventing children playing in a large field of rye from falling off a cliff.

“That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy,” the character tells his sister, Phoebe, after being kicked out of his fourth school, Pencey Prep.

The tale of lost innocence and alienation opened up a literary debate over whether Caulfield, in his struggle against society’s “phonies,” was inspired by Salinger’s own private- school experience and sense of disillusionment.

The novel continues to stir controversy today over its use of language -- “goddam” is repeated throughout -- and content including underage drinking and Caulfield’s hiring of a prostitute. Some U.S. schools have banned the book.

Court Case

Author Ian Hamilton’s attempt to shed light on one of the literary world’s most-reclusive figures was thwarted by a federal appeals court. In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court let the decision stand.

Hamilton, who sought to quote unpublished Salinger letters stored at university libraries for a conventional biography, reverted to writing a “literary adventure story” instead, “In Search of J.D. Salinger.”

In 2000, Salinger’s estranged daughter Margaret wrote the memoir “Dream Catcher.” In it, she described a neurotic father obsessed with health fads, including homeopathy and the drinking of his own urine. Her bid a year later to sell 32 letters from the author at Sotheby’s failed.

Salinger’s last legal challenge came in June of 2009 when he sued to block the publication of a sequel to his famous novel titled, “60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye.” The following month, a federal judge blocked author Fredrik Colting and Windupbird Publishing Ltd. from releasing the book in a preliminary injunction, ruling that it borrowed “quite extensively” from the original and didn’t qualify as a parody.

J.D. Salinger is survived by his wife, daughter Margaret, son Matthew, and three grandchildren.

--With assistance from Victoria Slind-Flor. Editors: James Greiff, Steven Gittelson.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nancy Moran in New York at +1-212-617-2331 or nmoran@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at +1-212-617-5801 or jgreiff@bloomberg.net.

10 Literary one-hit wonders

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5925834.ece

March 17, 2009
10 Literary one-hit wonders
Luke Leitch looks at those authors for whom one novel proved quite enough

Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird

“I never expected any sort of success with [To Kill a] Mockingbird. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers, but at the same time I hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement - public encouragement. I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I'd expected.”


Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind

Margaret Mitchell wrote Gone With The Wind in secret and gave it to an editor only after a colleague laughed at the idea of her writing a novel. It won a Pulitzer, inspired that film and sold tens of millions of copies. She died in 1949 in a car accident, on the way to the cinema.


Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is suddenly popular among French teenagers who have discovered Le Yorkshire thanks to the 21st-century vampire novels of Stephenie Meyer, which reference Bronte. Emily died of TB, the year after the publication of her only novel in 1847.


J.D.Salinger - Catcher in the Rye

Salinger is a member of the one-hit-wonder club only if you consider Franny and Zooey, published in 1961, as a novella. Salinger's last published work, a short story, appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” Three of the characters in Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray were based on Wilde himself. It was a little too racy for the critics of the times, and Wilde stuck with plays, poetry and short stories until his death a decade later.

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces

The author committed suicide in 1969, having given up hope of seeing his comic masterpiece in print. Eventually it was published in 1980. A "second novel", The Neon Bible, followed in 1989 - but this was actually written by Toole as a teenager and, as an adult, rejected as juvenilia.

Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar

Published under a pseudonym, The Bell Jar's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, suffers a psychological breakdown while working as in an intern for a New York fashion magazine. She attempts suicide, receives therapy and steps back towards stability. Plath committed suicide in 1963, the year of the book's publication.



Anna Sewell - Black Beauty

Anna Sewell's mother was a children's author but Sewell began her first novel aged 51. Black Beauty took six years to write and was intended, Sewell said, to encourage humane treatment of horses. She died in 1878, five months after its publication.

Boris Pasternak - Dr Zhivago

The manuscript of Dr Zhivago was smuggled out of Soviet Russia, published in Italy, and won Pasternak the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. He accepted but was then pressured to decline the prize. He died of lung cancer in 1960.

Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

After her debut novel The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize, the Indian writer turned to nonfiction writing and political activism. In 2007 she announced that she was returning to fiction. After a ten-year hiatus, the stakes will be higher than ever before - if Roy ever finishes her sophomore effort, it will be a triumph of will over the dreaded Second Novel Syndrome.