New Yorker Eulogizes J.D. Salinger
Just Me
New Yorker, on-line, even before it hits the streets, the stands, goes
into the post. In the most current issue under today's date, 1
February, 2010 are three articles containing never before published
words, remembrances and photos of J.D. Salinger; three articles and
one collection of photos from the Lillian Ross private collection.
We might well anticipate that this is just the beginning, the creaking
door opening before a great grand treasure soon to appear from within
the Salinger archive at the New Yorker and elsewhere, if not even the
very vaults of the Salinger literary estate at Cornish, N.H. And it's
easy enough to see why at least two of these memoirs have waited till
now to appear, even so complimentary as they are to the author.
Certainly the orders were out at the New Yorker to do nothing that
could stand to "piss Jerry off," so much as he guarded his privacy
with a quick trigger finger poised over the telephone, ready to the
summons of a regiment of lawyers. Who at the New Yorker knew, but that
he might have at least one more story to add to their credit before he
was done?
So far as we know, he didn't, but what do we know? We know that ever
since Catcher in the Rye went to the presses, the New Yorker has been
the exclusive publisher of all his following work, all of it, as to
first serial rights, even as the earliest short story versions of
Catcher were published at the New Yorker.
If you can keep a dry eye upon seeing those photos, reading those
memoirs, don't even talk to me! Or better yet, go down on your knees
and read "For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" -- and then we can,
finally, talk, with warm tears streaming down our faces . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Esm%C3%A9_%E2%80%93_with_Love_and_Squalor
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1950/04/08/1950_04_08_028_TNY_CARDS_000223104
--
JM