J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [210]
In 1974, it had been eleven years since Salinger had released his last book and nine since his last story. It was becoming obvious to the public that the author had subsided into silence and might not publish again. Many fans were frustrated. With no new publications forthcoming, it was almost natural that they would turn to Salinger’s pre–New Yorker stories to satisfy their appetite for his work. But reading early stories that Salinger had never collected together in book form was difficult. Most could be found only in 1940s magazines such as Collier’s, Esquire, or The Saturday Evening Post. Each story had to be tracked down individually, and few libraries held them all. The magazines that could be located and that still held a story (many had been relieved of pages, torn out for “personal” collections) were often tattered and fading. So in 1974, a renegade group of Salinger fans decided to remedy the author’s silence by assembling those of his short stories not already available in collections. They located twenty-one short stories, from “The Young Folks” to “Blue Melody,” and transcribed and bound them together into a pirated publication called The Complete Uncollected Short Stories of J. D. Salinger, volumes 1 and 2. Roughly 25,000 copies of the unauthorized collection were printed. They were then hawked to bookstores in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. When a young man, whom Brown described as being “a hippie, intellectual type,” showed up at the Gotham Book Mart attempting to sell copies of the collection, Brown immediately contacted Salinger.
For Salinger, the protection of his work and the defense of his privacy had become a full-time job. He and Olding were constantly attuned to anything that might threaten his privacy or infringe what Salinger considered to be his copyright. Just a year before, he had become furious with Gordon Lish at Esquire for authoring the deceptively Salinger-like story “For Rupert—with No Regrets.” Here was an author who demanded complete control over the tiniest aspect of his work and was determined to be the sole authority on which works would be published and how they would be presented. After having repeatedly blocked any rerelease of his early, pre–New Yorker stories, Salinger was incensed when he learned of the pirated collection. He contacted Dorothy Olding, and she hired a lawyer.
As angry as he was, it is likely that Salinger wanted to avoid litigation. A court case would have roused the media. Every newspaper and magazine in the nation would have covered it, anxious to reveal what the reclusive author had or had not been doing since 1965. It would have been an ordeal for Salinger. Dorothy Olding felt that there might be an alternative to a court case. If the publishers of the unauthorized collection understood how intent Salinger was on stopping its distribution, they might back down. Salinger could then avoid a trial and still prevent the release of his early stories. Olding contacted The New York Times and explained the situation. The newspaper, in turn, requested an interview with Salinger. So, during the last week of October 1974, Salinger did something that, for him, likely required tremendous courage: he called Times correspondent Lacey Fosburgh and granted the interview.
Surprisingly, Salinger’s interview with The New York Times remains his most revealing and reflective. After warning Fosburgh that he intended to be on the phone “only for a minute,” Salinger spoke for thirty. To Fosburgh, Salinger sounded “at times warm and charming, at times wary and skittish.” He acknowledged that he was still writing but revealed that he had no intention of publishing. “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” he said. “It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for