J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [110]
For a short time it appeared that Little, Brown would indeed postpone the release of Catcher for several months in deference to the Book-of-the-Month Club. In the end, it held to its release for mid-July. In the meantime, editors at the Book-of-the-Month Club were having problems with the novel’s title. When they asked Salinger to change it, he became indignant. Refusing, he maintained that Holden Caulfield would not agree to the idea, and that was that.15
By now Salinger had endured all he could stand of the process and decided that it was best to remove himself from the situation. He abruptly made plans to leave the country and avoid being present when the book came out. In escaping, it was only natural that he should seek out the company of Jamie Hamilton, so he bought himself a ticket aboard the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth, bound for Southampton, England.
In the background, Salinger’s former mentor Whit Burnett monitored events with morbid envy. With the acceptance of Salinger’s novel by the Book-of-the-Month Club assuring its success, Burnett appears to have become acutely resentful of Little, Brown and Company. When he read a publicity release for The Catcher in the Rye—the book that should have been his—that resentment overtook him. With clear indignation, he wrote to the publicity department of Little, Brown on April 6, scolding the publisher for ignoring his contribution to Salinger’s career:
I should like to call your attention, with a protest, to the inaccurate method of publicizing a friend of mine, a discovery of Story Magazine, and a young man whose first stories I have edited, published, and sponsored.… Your publicity Department says, “his previous work consists of only four short stories which have appeared in the New Yorker.” This is nonsense. I have printed several stories by Mr. Salinger in Story Magazine where his first one appeared after he was a student in my class at Columbia University.16
Burnett went on to recite every Salinger story he had ever published and a list of other authors who had appeared in the magazine. “Perhaps in your future publicity,” Burnett concluded, “this error might not occur again.” To Little, Brown’s credit, Burnett soon received a respectful and sincere apology from D. Angus Cameron himself.17 But the damage had been done: Burnett had been denied not only the novel he had so long coveted but also any benefit of being connected to it.
• • •
On Tuesday, May 8, Salinger left for Britain, anxious to avoid the tumult of publication. He knew that with The Catcher in the Rye he had crafted his finest work to date. Yet the same ego that assured him of the novel’s quality made it unbearable for him to watch as publicists cheapened it and critics dissected it. His original plan was to sit out the American release of Catcher through a long, unscripted tour of the British Isles. He would end his trip prior to the novel’s release in Britain, hoping that by the time he returned to New York, the commotion over the book would have begun to fade. When he boarded the Queen Elizabeth for England, he could not have realized that he was taking the first step in a flight from scrutiny that would never end.
When he docked at Southampton, he made straight for his publisher’s offices. Hamilton treated Salinger’s arrival in London as a triumphal entry. He presented the author with a special copy of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, the same book that Holden Caulfield had so enjoyed in Catcher, as well as a copy of the British version of his own novel. To Salinger