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635

J. D. Salinger

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:0.00 USD Estimated At:8,000.00 - 10,000.00 USD
J. D. Salinger

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Auction Date:2010 Jan 13 @ 10:00 (UTC-05:00 : EST/CDT)
Location:5 Rt 101A Suite 5, Amherst, New Hampshire, 03031, United States
Six-letter archive comprised of five two-page TLSs and a one-page ANS, all signed with various pseudonyms including “Armand,” “Chick,” “Scott Weinfeld, Jr”, "Rory,” and “Juan Pedro,” various sizes, postmarked from Vermont between March 1981 and January 1982. The opinionated and colorful musings of Salinger include, but are far from limited to…

“Astrology, for me, is a prop and a tool for the dream we all live in…Selfishly speaking, it’s phenomenally easy on me to type and mail thoughts to someone whose ascend conjuncts my sun, moon, and Venus, whose Jupiter trine my sun, moon, and Venus, whose Venus conj. my Pluto and Jupiter in the Seventh House, and fascinatingly, a lot more than that”

“I dislike and dread feeling under par, inordinately tired or fragile, as I did most of my life, and I can’t imagine not deploring and despising outright stupid or unnecessary forms of abuse of these bodies we appear to live in, reside in…There has or ought to be a middle ground between the granola eaters and the Yodel and coke consumers. The bad fact is, it’s no cinch to find out what one definitely…thrive[s] on…with the enemy, the real menace, the mind”

“I throw most of that crap out before I leave the P.O., but sometimes, out of stupidity or because some goof is checking me out as I stand reading, I shove the mess into my briefcase and take it home…When it reaches a pile of a certain size…it automatically paralyzes me for days or weeks…I’d never even vaguely anticipated the freakishness, the coarse and really brutally self-interested incursion of unsolicited mail …the grosser ninety-five percent slowly kills…thanks to the press and the adorable Time-Life Syndicate, it’s known where I hole up, and most fishy mail arrives here licketysplit”

“I dread like poison having affable workers on the premises again. So strenuous trying to be not-a-bad-guy-really for a whole damn week, maddeningly slow, garrulous, twelve-fifty-an-hour, third-rate carpenters shuffling and hammering around right outside this window. Thermos bottles and waxed paper have always depressed hell out of me”

“It’s probably a good idea to suspect very strongly that a divorced or single parent’s very visible aloneness, or consortlessness, is pretty much a condition a kid considers contrary to approved herd ways”

“I like Meryl Streep’s acting (especially her crying),…I don’t think I enjoy watching her very much, and would rather stay home and watch Madeleine Carroll or Gia Scala”

“About dialogue samples. If I were you, I’d never send samples of anything to anybody except, of necessity, some editor or publisher where you might want to place the writing. Otherwise, no one. All responses, ‘favorable’ or otherwise, are misleading, damaging, interruptive, if not immediately, sooner or later”

Included is a photocopy of a document from Janet, 8.5 x 11, lending some background to the archive, in part: “In 1980, I wrote J.D. Salinger a letter. There had been an article in the February Edition of People Magazine about some Canadian kid who had invaded Salinger’s privacy in the hope of getting an interview and writing a piece about him. Salinger predictably told the kid to buzz off. My older brother Tim and I were talking about it, and…I felt moved…to write a letter to Salinger, expressing both our feelings about him and his work. Weeks later, he wrote back…We corresponded, off and on, for over 2 years. I visited his home twice.” A photocopy of a People Magazine cover and article, “A Young Writer Brings the World a Message from J.D. Salinger: ‘Go Away,’” by Barbara Kleban, February 25, 1980, is also included. In fine overall condition.

Reclusiveness makes strange bedfellows, as Salinger learned when he replied to a letter from a woman who sympathized with his desire for privacy, and in the process gained a pen pal who at least twice visited his house—after having been invited! The immediate success of Holden Caufield and The Catcher in the Rye (1951), catapulted Salinger to fame—something he neither sought nor desired and forced him to withdraw from public life. Rather than be forgotten, his reclusiveness had the opposite effect, adding to the novel’s mystique and raising continuous questions about the gifted author. Unpublished archives such as this, then, offer the only information as to what Salinger has to say, as he has not made a public appearance nor published any new work since 1965 and steadfastly has refused all interview requests since 1974. An exceedingly rare and desirable collection.
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