J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [215]
Since 1965, Salinger had refused to share his writings with the world. His work had since become a completely private occupation. Still, he doggedly justified his isolation as being payment for his calling, his sacrifice for his art. In truth, Salinger had now become comfortable with his seclusion, while others continued to be hurt by the exchange. Salinger no longer bore the brunt of his sacrifice. In this case, it belonged solely to Mitchell, who was required to relinquish a friendship he had cherished for years.
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By the mid-1980s, Salinger had been silent for twenty years. Though he had decided against publishing his own work, he was unable to stop others from writing about him. New books on Salinger appeared on the market constantly—books over which he held no control. Frederick Gwynn had produced The Fiction of J. D. Salinger back in 1958. Warren French’s J. D. Salinger followed in 1961, and 1962 saw William Belcher and James Lee’s J. D. Salinger and the Critics. The following year a flood of Salinger-related books came out, among them Donald Fiene’s annotated Salinger bibliography and works by Marvin Laser and Ihab Hassan. In subsequent years, James E. Miller, James Lundquist, and Harold Bloom added to the list, until by the mid-1980s, Salinger had been the topic of dozens of publications that served to keep his work in the public consciousness while the author himself remained silent.
Each book had been written as a critical analysis of Salinger’s work. In order to support their interpretative explanations, they quoted liberally from various Salinger pieces, especially The Catcher in the Rye. As they were scholarly works of literary analysis, Salinger was powerless to influence their content. Aside from cursory timelines that included Salinger’s birth, war service, and publication dates, no one had yet attempted an in-depth biography of the author. In 1982, W. P. Kinsella released his best seller Shoeless Joe, with J. D. Salinger as a main character. Yet though Salinger speaks freely of his life in Kinsella’s novel, Shoeless Joe remains a work of fiction and Salinger’s character was never intended to be a literal depiction of the author.
In May 1986, Salinger received a package from Dorothy Olding. Enclosed was a bound publisher’s galley proof of an unauthorized biography entitled J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life. The manuscript’s author was Ian Hamilton, a well-known British editor, biographer, and poet, who had been commissioned by Random House to crack the enigma of Salinger’s public image. Salinger flipped through the galley’s pages. They contained details of his private life never before published, generously supplemented by long excerpts from his personal letters.
After the Ransom Center had acquired his letters to Elizabeth Murray in 1968, Salinger had been successful in removing most of his personal correspondences from the archives of Ober Associates and (to a lesser extent) The New Yorker. But his letters to Whit Burnett could not be retrieved. The archives of Story Press had been purchased by Princeton University in 1965. Among Princeton’s holdings was Salinger’s communication with his former mentor. Hamilton had discovered these letters and, along with the Ransom Center collection, used them to fuel his book.
Like innumerable journalists before him, Hamilton had attempted to interview Salinger’s friends, neighbors, and business colleagues. He had tracked down the author’s former classmates from Ursinus and Valley Forge, requesting their opinions and memories. He had written to Ober Associates but received no reply. He had then sent a form letter to all the Salingers in the New York City phone book on the off chance they might be related to his subject. He had never traveled to