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in. Women were anxious to date him. Strangers sought his autograph. There was an explosion of fan mail. Salinger admitted to having initially enjoyed the attention. After all, it was what he had worked for all his life. Nevertheless, once placed in these situations, he squirmed under their demands. His newfound inclination to cloister himself came into conflict with his social instincts. He dated women he could not trust. He accepted invitations to events at which he found himself uncomfortable, drinking too much and regretting having attended them in the first place. Then, the following week, he would accept another invitation. Like Holden Caulfield, Salinger appeared uncertain of which direction to move in.

Aside from Catcher’s publication, a number of events occurred in 1951 that would affect Salinger for years to come. During the previous autumn, he had attended a party given by Francis Steegmuller of The New Yorker and his wife, the artist Bee Stein. It was there that he met Claire Douglas, the daughter of the renowned British art dealer Robert Langton Douglas and half sister of Baron William Sholto Douglas, marshal of the Royal Air Force. Claire was only sixteen but was instantly drawn to the thirty-two-year-old Salinger. In turn, he was enchanted by the demure young girl with the large, expressive eyes and childlike nature. The following day, he called the Steegmullers to express his interest in Claire, and they gave him her address at Shipley, ironically the same private school that Jane Gallagher attends in The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger contacted Claire that week, and the couple dated intermittently for the next year.

At times their relationship was intense, although chaste by all accounts. During the summer of 1951, it was interrupted by Salinger’s visit to Britain and the death of Claire’s father, which took her to Italy for the funeral. When each returned to America, the romance was revived. However, in a December letter to Jamie Hamilton, Salinger revealed a serious romance with a girl he called “Mary,” confiding to Hamilton that he and Mary had actually considered marrying before coming to their senses. Salinger’s tone made it plain that he was still captivated by this girl despite attempts to be “rational.”11 The chances are that there was no “Mary” and Salinger was actually referencing Claire Douglas. Jamie Hamilton would have immediately recognized Claire—and her young age—had Salinger identified her by name. The Douglases held power in Britain, and the family was well known.

The rationality that Salinger referred to in putting away his romance was, in fact, religion. After returning home from Europe he began to frequent the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center on East 94th Street, around the corner from his parents’ apartment on Park Avenue, which taught a form of Eastern philosophy centered on the Hindu Vedas, called Vedanta. There, Salinger was introduced to The Gospels of Sri Ramakrishna, a huge volume of complicated religious doctrine that explicitly advocated sexual restraint. As a result, although he dated often during 1951, there has never been a whisper that he engaged his companions sexually. In fact, Salinger’s dates were more likely to share religious discussions than physical contact.

• • •

The close of 1951 delivered a shock when New Yorker founder Harold Ross, who had turned fifty-nine that November, fell ill with a mysterious ailment.

Just how serious Ross’s illness was became apparent late that summer, when he could no longer make it to the magazine’s offices. Ross had edited every issue of The New Yorker since 1925, and his absence was ominous. Alarmed, Salinger wrote to him expressing his concern and his hope that Ross would soon return to work. The editor did return in mid-September and life at the magazine appeared to go back to normal. Salinger made plans to visit Ross for a weekend that October but suddenly came down with shingles and was forced to postpone the trip. On October 23, Ross sent Salinger his own sympathies, comforting him with rearranged plans for their visit. “I’ll