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himself that he was the modern-day Holden Caulfield. Carrying the book, Chapman traced every step that Holden takes in the novel. He talked with a prostitute wearing a green dress, went to the Central Park Zoo, visited the lake and the carousel, and actually asked a policeman where the Central Park ducks go in winter. Then he made his way to the Dakota. When the police arrived to arrest Chapman, he was still reading placidly. They removed the book from his hands and took him into custody. Inside the novel, they noticed that Chapman had written a disturbing inscription: “This is my statement. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye.”

In interviews given as late as 2006, Chapman always maintained that he had killed John Lennon because he had been influenced by Salinger’s novel. He alternately explained that he felt that he was actually Holden Caulfield; was fearful that Lennon was proclaiming himself to be the new catcher in the rye; and had killed the musician to save him from descending into phoniness. Chapman later dropped the insanity ploy and pleaded guilty to the crime. Convicted, he was sentenced to twenty years to life in Attica State Prison, where he remains.

Mark David Chapman had interpreted Salinger’s work in the most twisted of ways. Unfortunately, for years afterward Salinger fans were looked upon with suspicion, as if instability and appreciation of Salinger’s work went hand in hand. On March 30, 1981, less than four months after Lennon’s murder, an attempt was made on the life of President Ronald Reagan. A psychotic by the name of John Hinckley, Jr., shot the president, his press secretary, and his bodyguard in an attempt to capture the attention of the actress Jodie Foster. When police searched the contents of Hinckley’s Washington hotel room, they found that he had brought ten books with him. Among them was a book on Shakespeare, a book on insanity pleas, and The Catcher in the Rye. Coming so soon after Lennon’s murder, the press exploited the discovery of Salinger’s novel among Hinckley’s belongings. An odd speculation emerged from these crimes. Some believed that Lennon’s death and Reagan’s shooting were part of a complicated conspiracy, a plot reminiscent of The Manchurian Candidate. A number of publications and articles appeared proposing that mysterious entities within the U.S. government had diabolically infused The Catcher in the Rye with subliminal commands to murder. This bizarre idea was reignited in 1997 with the release of the film Conspiracy Theory, in which a programmed assassin compulsively collects hundreds of copies of The Catcher in the Rye.

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Salinger’s pleas to be left alone were disregarded by the media, a situation that he seems to have never completely understood. Enticed by the mystique of his self-imposed inaccessibility, newspapers and magazines hounded him in his retirement as eagerly as they had in 1961, at the height of his professional success. Perhaps the most infamous Salinger “scoop” was a rare interview that appeared on July 24, 1981, in the popular literary magazine The Paris Review. Entitled “What I Did Last Summer,” the article was edited by George Plimpton and was bylined Betty Eppes.

Eppes had obtained the “interview” through a ruse. According to the article, Salinger had been tricked into meeting with her after reading a note left for him at the Windsor post office in which Eppes identified herself as a struggling novelist who simply wanted to meet a great author and would respect his privacy. Salinger met with Eppes but answered few questions, forcing Eppes to populate much of her article with descriptions of Salinger’s reticence and her struggle to keep her tape recorder and camera concealed during the interview. She did manage to ask Salinger a significant question about the place of women in the American Dream, igniting a passionate response from the author, who was appalled by her apparent discouragement. “The American Dream is for all Americans,” he protested. “Women are Americans too. It is for you too. Proceed. Claim it if you want it.”11 Then, displaying