Subject: Re: Letters FROM Salinger being collected?
From: Will Hochman (hochman@southernct.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 31 2001 - 23:17:47 GMT
Chris, I don't think unpublished work can have a copyright...but
Salinger did stop Ian Hamilton from using unpublished letters in In
Search Of...I don't feel great about the Letters From Salinger rumor
even though I know it may help publicize our Letters to Salinger
because the rumored book seems so tawdry and typical of our cultural
thirst for exposing people...I don't think Salinger's interest in
young people or his sex life has as much to do with his fiction as
many people want to make of it. I will rest a bit easier with your
copyright reminder, but so much of the author has been torn and
shreaded in the name of "biography" and not enough of what he writes
is really discussed. That's why I love our book...it's really about
what readers do with Salinger's fiction in their lives; it's not
really at all about the fiction of Salinger's life. I guess what I'm
saying is that what we can know of the facts of Salinger's life seem
tiny compared to what his fiction may help us know and feel...
Anyhow, thanks for the legal prozac...back to work on the afterward
and class prep, will
PS: If you really want to know, I know this is a list post that
sounds more like a personal letter but Chris has been more and more
like a buddy of a brother these days and if anyone is gonna get that,
it's bananafish...and I'm guessing this is something some of us care
about....
>Isn't it all a mute point? After all, ole JDS owns the copyrights to
>any letter written to anyone and nobody'd ever get permission to
>reprint them.
>
>Chris
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <mailto:hochman@southernct.edu>Will Hochman
>To: <mailto:bananafish@roughdraft.org>bananafish@roughdraft.org
>Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 7:02 PM
>Subject: Letters FROM Salinger being collected?
>
>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
>
>http://www.southernct.edu/~hochman/willz.html
-- Will Hochman Assistant Professor of English Southern Connecticut State University 501 Crescent St, New Haven, CT 06515 203 392 5024
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