J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [200]
Salinger had at least one professional satisfaction in 1964. That year, Signet Books’ contract for the paperback edition of The Catcher in the Rye finally expired. Salinger refused to renew the agreement and sold the rights to Bantam Books instead. He delivered his usual set of stipulations to the new publishers with the added demand that he himself design the book’s cover. Bantam agreed, and Salinger sent it an austere design that featured only the title and his name. He instructed Bantam on what typeface to use, the precise size and kerning of its characters, and even mailed it a swatch of the exact color he wanted used for the book’s cover. The resulting edition of The Catcher in the Rye was a maroon-covered edifice with its title and author in a shade somewhere between yellow and orange, the “J” and the “D” of Salinger’s name of two different typefaces.10
To this day, Salinger’s design arguably remains the most beloved and cherished book presentation in American literary history. For all of its starkness and simplicity, the sight of no other book brings on such a rush of memories or causes so many hearts to skip a beat as does the 1964 Bantam edition of The Catcher in the Rye. Recognizing its success, Bantam used the cover design for twenty-seven years without alteration, until the publication rights were transferred to Little, Brown and Company in 1991.
• • •
Early in January 1965, The New Yorker began the process of setting aside nearly an entire issue for the appearance of what would prove to be Salinger’s final publication: a 28,000-word addition to the Glass family series titled “Hapworth 16, 1924.” The files of The New Yorker are unusually silent on the details of the novella’s reception by the editorial staff and its eventual acceptance by William Shawn.* It is probable that “Hapworth” depended solely upon Shawn’s inevitable approval and bypassed the usual editorial scrutiny, as had “Seymour—an Introduction.” Shawn was by now accustomed to taking chances with Salinger’s increasingly unorthodox work. In the past, the risk had proved to be justified and the results profitable. If the erratic nature of “Hapworth” gave the editor pause, he could soothe his misgivings with reminders of past vindications. For the same reason, if others at the magazine were aware of the structure of Salinger’s new story, they would have been reluctant to speak against it. Such condemnations had proved unwise in the past, and it would have been hazardous for any employee of the magazine to attack the work of Shawn’s best friend, recent defender, and father of his godchild. In a 1997 radio interview, William Maxwell refused to comment on the story’s reception at The New Yorker. “I’d rather not talk about it, actually,” he hedged. “I have been, and I hope still am, a friend of Salinger, and he doesn’t really like to be talked about. So I’d just rather not do it.”11 In all probability, the acceptance of “Hapworth 16, 1924” by The New Yorker was a fait accompli rather than a topic of debate.
• • •
“Hapworth” begins with a preface to the reader by Buddy Glass. It is now Friday, May 28, 1965. Like Salinger himself, Buddy is forty-six. Six years have passed since he wrote “Seymour—an Introduction” and seventeen years since his brother’s suicide. Buddy has just received mail from his mother, Bessie. Opening it, he discovers a letter written by Seymour to his family back in 1924. The letter is addressed from the infirmary of Camp Simon Hapworth, Maine, where Seymour and Buddy spent the summer when they were seven and five. Buddy explains that he has never seen the letter before and will transcribe it for the reader in its entirety. The same feelings of obligation that drove Buddy to write “Seymour—an Introduction” now compel him to share the exact contents of Seymour’s forty-one-year-old letter.
From the beginning of Seymour’s letter home, it is clear that readers are not dealing with an average