Salinger Letters on display

Letters reveal JD Salinger was writing regularly long after 1965
Letters to go on display for the first time in New York show that JD Salinger wrote regularly for years after he stopped publishing

Alison Flood
guardian.co.uk
Monday 15 February 2010

Letters written by JD Salinger to the designer of The Catcher in the Rye's jacket, which are to go on display at a New York museum, show that the author was still writing regularly long after he stopped publishing in 1965.

The 11 letters, written between 1951 and 1993, were sent to his friend of more than 40 years E Michael Mitchell, who at one point Salinger addresses, Holden Caulfield-style, as "Buddyroo". They show that he would start work every morning at six, or seven at the latest, refusing to be interrupted "unless absolutely necessary or convenient", according to a report in the New York Times, which revealed that the letters were to be made public at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.

A 1966 letter points to "ten, 12 years' work [which includes] two particular scripts – books really – that I've been hoarding at and picking at for years," the New York Times reported, while in 1951, the author refers to a trip to London just before The Catcher in the Rye was published, during which he visited the home of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh for cocktails. "Naturally, some gin went up my nose. I damn near left by the window," Salinger wrote.

Salinger died aged 91 at the end of January after years spent avoiding the public eye. The letters show him apologising for his solitary ways, telling Mitchell that he can't answer the telephone "without unconsciously gritting my teeth", and revealing his anger at a planned biography in 1983. "I'll weep if they bother you and Bet," he wrote, referring to Mitchell's ex-wife.

The letters were donated to the museum in 1998 but kept under wraps until the author's death. They are now being prepared for an exhibition.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/15/salinger-letters-new-york