Subject: Letters FROM Salinger being collected?
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2001 - 20:02:42 GMT
I spoke last night with a journalist (who also says she's doing an
NYU dissertation...) who claims to have broken the story that
Margaret Salinger was publishing Dream Catcher...and is now in
pursuit of finding out about a supposed book of letters Salinger
wrote to young girls. Apparently, this journalist has some evidence
that someone named Ken Rendell has been buying auctioned letters from
Salinger (for Bill Gates?) (for someone who plans to put them in a
book?) (???) and this person I spoke with at length on the phone
wants to know about the rumor/truth of an emerging book. Due to
prepositional confusion she thought I might be this person but I
explained that Chris and I are working on Letters TO Salinger.
When she learned I'm not the book editor/scholar she thought I was,
she asked for my help. After directing her to my home page and points
I made in my dissertation, I gave her an hour lesson on the phone
(Zooey style) about why I thought it was ridiculous to fish out
letters Salinger kindly wrote and expose them to cultural shifts. I
tried to explain how students in a class last month read APDFB and
couldn't avoid wondering if Seymour was perverted in the way he
touched and talked to Sybil, and how I read that as a change from the
50's to now. I still think Seymour was not hitting on Sybil just
communicating and connecting...but in our Politically Correct times
where there's a story almost every day about perversion (The mayor of
Waterbury, Connecticut has just been arrested for having sex with
young girls) it's easy to see how others would suspect Seymour...and
Salinger.
I believe Salinger is entitled to his sexuality and privacy and don't
support a book trying to play off Maynard's tawdry points...but I'm
very curious to learn more about it...does anyone know of anyone
buying letters from Salinger toward a book? Apparently, the grace of
Peter Norton buying Maynard's letters and returning them to Salinger
isn't a continuing grace but we'll see...will
-- Will Hochman Assistant Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024
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