Salinger's Letters To Be Auctioned
James J Rovira (jrovira@juno.com)
Wed, 12 May 1999 15:44:00 -0400 (EDT)
Salinger's Letters To Be Auctioned
.c The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- Fourteen letters by J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author
of
``The Catcher in the Rye,'' are to be auctioned at Sotheby's, The New
York
Times reported today.
The letters were written between April 1972 and August 1973 to author
Joyce
Maynard, with whom Salinger had a nine-month romance. Their relationship
began when she was an 18-year-old Yale University student and he was 53.
The
auction is set for June 22.
Ms. Maynard quit school to live in an isolated cottage in Cornish, N.H.,
with
Salinger, who has shunned public life. He ended their relationship in
1973.
Ms. Maynard, who for 25 years declined to discuss the relationship, last
year
revealed Salinger's eccentricities and fixations in a memoir, ``At Home
in
the World.'' She plans to sell the letters, which run the gamut from
formal
to smitten to impersonal, reflecting the course of their relationship.
Salinger, now 80 and still obsessively private, last wrote for
publication in
1965.
Ms. Maynard said the decision to sell the letters, which will be offered
as a
lot, was financial. They are expected to fetch up to $80,000, Sotheby's
officials said.
``I'd rather put my children through college than own a box full of
Salinger's letters,'' said Ms. Maynard, who is divorced and has three
children. ``They were a piece of my past that I've finished with, and I'd
rather use them to help support my family.''
Salinger's lawyer and literary agent declined to discuss the sale of the
38
pages of letters, which are typed or written in ink or pencil on typing
paper, yellow lined paper and a card from the New York Public Library.
Salinger, as is his custom, was unavailable for comment. He said in a
deposition in the 1980s, though, when an author wanted to use some of his
other letters for a book: ``Privacy is privacy. Letters were meant for a
certain pair of eyes and those eyes alone.''
AP-NY-05-12-99 0721EDT
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