Re: collecting salinger
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Sun, 18 Apr 1999 21:46:44 -0400
On Sun, Apr 18, 1999 at 08:36:38PM -0700, bob pigeon wrote:
> but they're hard to find, so the people who have come across them then go
> and share them...where's the betrayal in that? he published them! you
> think he'd be sitting in his house going ,
>
> "goddammit, those jerks are reading that stuff i wrote and put in major
> magazines!!! how could they!?!?"
I think (both here and in Salinger's legal camp) you would find greater
objection to the distribution of *unpublished* material. I mean, "An
Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" or (I may be paraphrasing this title) "The
Last and Best of the Peter Pans" were never in any magazines; maybe they
were rejected; maybe they were never submitted. It's Salinger's right
to assert that they not see the light of day, even if you have a copy
and disagree.
As far as the uncollected copies in magazines, it is a clear violation
of the law for anyone other than Salinger to gather together and
republish these works. The author has expressed his desire that they
die a natural death, and I can see why he might not want them
anthogized. Yes, you can, under the doctrine of "fair use," make
yourself a copy for your personal research. But you can't gather
your favorites, or assemble an anthology for redistribution, and expect
to do it without meeting resistance.
Nobody -- not Salinger, not some pig-headed person -- could
retroactively suppress stories published commercially in the 1940s,
nor would he be able to stop you from reading the archival copies
on a library's shelf.
But that does NOT give you or anyone the right (as has happened in
the past) to create an unauthorized collection and to distribute that
collection. It would run absolutely in the face of the notion of
U.S. copyright protection, which is that unless he's given up the
rights, the work is the author's property, and only he or his estate
can decide what do do with the work -- whether to reprint it or not.
Sharing hard-to-find work is a grey area. As long as it's used for
"scholarship" and "educational purposes," which covers a lot of
territory, you're probably safe in sharing a published story with a
friend.
But to do another unauthorized edition of uncollected stories? No
way. The law is pretty explicit about it.
--tim o'connor