Letters to J. D. Salinger

by Chris Kubica (Editor), Chris Kubica (Editor)

He published his only novel more than fifty years ago. He has hardly been seen or heard from since 1965. Most writers fitting such a description are long forgotten, but if the novel is The Catcher in the Rye and the writer is J. D. Salinger . . . well, he’s the stuff of legends, the most famously reclusive writer of the twentieth century. If you could write to him, what would you say?

Salinger continues to maintain his silence, but Holden Caulfield, Franny and Zooey, and Seymour Glass—the unforgettable characters of his novel and short stories—continue to speak to generations of readers and writers. Letters to Salinger includes more than 150 personal letters addressed to Salinger from well-known writers, editors, critics, journalists, and other luminaries, as well as from students, teachers, and readers around the world, some of whom have just discovered Salinger for the first time. Their voices testify to the lasting impressions Salinger’s ideas and emotions have made on so many diverse lives.

Contributors include Marvin Bell, Frederick Busch, Stephen Collins, Nicholas Delbanco, Warren French, Herbert Gold, W. P. Kinsella, Molly McQuade, Stewart O’Nan, Robert O’Connor, Ellis Paul, Molly Peacock, Sanford Pinsker, George Plimpton, Gerald Rosen, Sid Salinger, David Shields, Joseph Skibell, Melanie Rae Thon, Alma Luz Villanueva, Katharine Weber, and many others

270 pages, Hardcover

First published March 4, 2002

Reviews

[Caitlin Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is bizarre but I do love it! This is essentially a compilation of letters addressed to JD Salinger, a writer famously reclusive who hates fan mail, from writers, teachers, students, and people online posting on “jdsalinger.com” in the mid 1990s. The dude who compiled all these letters compels me in his own right—in his introduction he talks about how he’s been obsessed with letter-sending since childhood, and that every week for several years of his life, he would write three poems to every celebrity and leaders of countries whose address he could find. His weird poems always garnered a lot more responses than he’d (or me) anticipated—the president of Jamaica and Bill Clinton and Brad Pitt responded to him—and he got stuck on the idea of getting a response from the one guy who everyone knows never responds to letters: Salinger. So this book is an effort to get Salinger’s attention, or at the very least preserve the sense that we all wanted his attention.
Some of these letters are downright bizarre, but most of them are poignant and sweet and sending up a little literary prayer to the most compelling writer hermit god. My favorites were the ones pulled from the web—there was something so vulnerable about them, in that they were mostly just saying “thanks for writing this story that helped me in my life! By the way, do you watch the sunsets?” I love that!!!
This is very much too a meta text about why it is so many people are obsessed with contacting and communing with Salinger, something about the dichotomy of the vulnerable humanity of his short stories and novel in juxtaposition against his strange self-enforced isolation. Salinger is my own personal favorite problematic white dude author, because, indeed, the humanity and humor in his stories never fail to move me, and his mythic hermit status compels me. It was cool reading about how many other people—and such a diverse range of readers—felt the same way I do!

[Adrienne Kiser · Rating 4 out of 5]

The 30 or so years that J.D.Salinger spent as a recluse seem, to those of us who love his books, almost like wasted time. Compiling a book of letters to an author who very famously did not accept communication from outsiders almost seems like a wasted effort, but instead these letters come off as poignant and lively. There is a whole spectrum here, from the academics discussing Salinger's use of language and character creation to the high school kid that says how much they hated Catcher in the Rye.

Several of the letters express hope that Salinger was writing all along, coupled with hope that such writing will be released after his death. I feel the same way.