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that had scorched him time and again and a lesson that he never learned completely. In 1961, he would dedicate Franny and Zooey to William Shawn, designating him as “my editor, mentor, and (heaven help him) closest friend.”9 Shawn would prove to be the last such exception. After the incident with Jamie Hamilton, the suspicion of editors that was already second nature to Salinger became engraved in stone. From the Hamilton debacle on, Salinger would make certain that every contract, including foreign translations of his works, held clauses granting him final say over their presentations, down to the narrowest of details. For this reason, nearly all subsequent Salinger publications are devoid of illustrations, marquees, descriptions, biographies of the author not written by Salinger himself, and, least surprisingly, his photograph. Few authors have ever exercised as much control over their finished product. Though many have viewed his preoccupation with such details as an eccentric compulsion, Salinger always considered that he was merely protecting the integrity of his work, a lesson taught to him well by Whit Burnett, John Woodburn, and Jamie Hamilton.

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By the spring of 1960, Salinger had decided that the time was right to release a new book but not the Glass novel that he had been promising. He instead determined to defy his critics and combine “Franny” and “Zooey” for national release. In doing so, his ambition again outweighed his reluctance to deal with publishers—this time Ned Bradford, who had replaced John Woodburn at Little, Brown and Company after Woodburn’s death, much in the same way that William Shawn had taken over managing Salinger after the death of Gus Lobrano at The New Yorker. While striving to stay as far removed as possible from the publishing process, Salinger insisted upon control over publicity and presentation. He delivered a series of demands to Little, Brown via Dorothy Olding and instructed Ober Associates to deal directly with the publishers. Still, within a few months, rumors of Salinger’s upcoming book slipped out and caused a media uproar, spurring a level of attention from newspapers and magazines that should have caused Salinger to reexamine the direction in which he was heading.

The first major encroachment into Salinger’s private life came from Newsweek, which, along with Time, was one of America’s most popular and respected newsmagazines. Despite its respectability, the tactics used by Newsweek to collect information on Salinger evoked those used by modern-day paparazzi. This, naturally, was due to Salinger’s reputation as a recluse who avoided encounters with the press at all cost. Regardless of Salinger’s well-known wishes to keep his personal life private, Newsweek was determined to get its story. It sent the reporter Mel Elfin to Cornish to investigate the secretive author. Elfin staked out his subject for a week but was unable to catch even a glimpse of Salinger. Forced to interview Salinger’s friends, neighbors, and acquaintances instead, Elfin found few who were willing to talk, and those who did shed little new light on Salinger. Elfin learned that Salinger could converse for hours about music, detective novels (which he read in abundance), Zen Buddhism, Japanese poetry, and yoga. One neighbor added the odd detail that he had practiced standing on his head before he was married. But most descriptions kept Salinger’s public persona neatly intact. “Jerry works like a dog,” the artist Bertrand Yeaton told Elfin. “He’s a meticulous craftsman who constantly revises, polishes, and rewrites.”10

With Elfin, Newsweek had sent a photographer to record Salinger’s image. One day, the photographer was staked out in his car, parked on the roadside leading to Salinger’s cottage. Salinger appeared on the path with Peggy in tow, probably on their ritual trek into Windsor to collect the family mail. Catching the stranger off guard, Salinger approached him. Perhaps it was the author’s inherent politeness or the presence of four-year-old Peggy, but the photographer felt a tinge of shame over