a new book proposal

Oh, dear! Therre is apparently a memoir making the rounds, written
by someone who used to work at JDS's agent's office. The full text
appears below. Among other things, it alleges that, contrary to
our dearest wishes, there is no stash of manuscripts waiting to be
published.

I love the detail about Salinger on the phone, deaf.

Well, maybe it's exaggerated for the sake of attracting attention?
Hmmmm.

--tim

This appeared in the NY Post:

INSIDE SALINGER'S OWN WORLD

A FORMER staffer at Harold Ober Associates, which represents reclusive
literary legend J.D. Salinger, is peddling a memoir that lifts the lid
off Salinger's secretive life.

The juiciest bits of Jaime Clarke's "O What Fun We'll Have! O The
Times!" - leaked to publishers this week - involve the author of "The
Catcher in the Rye," who lives in seclusion in Cornish, N.H.

It was Clarke's job to open up all correspondence sent by Salinger to
his agent, Harold Ober Associates president Phyllis Westberg.

"What I learned from these letters was that the author led a peaceful
life in the wiles [sic] of New England," Clarke writes.

"I learned about his pets' maladies, that his favorite movie is 'The
Lost Weekend,' that his house caught fire a number of years ago but has
since been rebuilt, that he travels under several nom de plumes . . .
but always uses the first name Jerry, since his wife can't remember the
more complicated ruses, and that, contrary to popular opinion, he is not
sitting on a wealth of manuscripts to be published after his death."

Clarke writes that eightysomething Salinger will never allow a movie
version of "The Catcher In the Rye" or any of his other books. He
relates that Jeffrey Katzenberg once "called on behalf of DreamWorks to
make an offer for the film rights to 'The Catcher in the Rye' (with the
additional caveat that Steven Spielberg would direct)" as well as "the
time Harvey Weinstein called with a similar offer for rights (minus
Steven Spielberg, obviously)."

Clarke muses that the Katzenbergs and Weinsteins of the world would be
outraged if they knew that their offers were never even passed on for
consideration.

Clarke, who was instructed to yell into the phone if the "all but deaf"
Salinger ever called, spoke briefly to him once in 1998, when Salinger
called to demand action against Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui, whose
unauthorized adaptation of Salinger's 1961 novel "Franny and Zooey," was
screening at Lincoln Center. Salinger's lawyer got the screening
canceled.

Clarke says that because of Salinger's hearing loss, he "prefers to
receive written letters as communication, to be sure that he understands
what he is being told . . . Apparently the author had one of those
telephone enhancer thingeys, but he broke it in a rage and never
bothered to replace it."

--tim

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Received on Thu Dec 4 13:54:32 2003