In Cornish, he spent a good deal of time mingling with the young people. He had forsworn New York society, but he had not forsworn society altogether. Salinger himself had a pioneer’s idealism as he set about controlling his domain.”įor a while, Salinger’s relationship to his new town was open and friendly. He moved there in the winter of 1952-53, Hamilton writes, into a primitive house where he and his wife intended to live a life of “uncompromising purity.” They were to “grow their own food but would not kill even the tiniest of creatures. Salinger, who will be 70 years old New Year’s Day, lives virtually incommunicado behind a high fence in Cornish, N.H. The circumstance of such worldwide acceptance is amusing and ironic, doubling back upon itself, for Holden Caulfield, hero of the book, scorns the crass side of the world most of us know, and his creator, Salinger, removed himself from it more than 30 years ago. Fame and respect do not always add up to sales, but “Catcher” sells more than a quarter of a million copies annually. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” (1951) is one of the most famous and best-respected novels of our century. If the result of his choice is an awkward and necessarily fragmentary work, it is better than no book at all. His alternative was not to have written a book at all. However, Hamilton had little choice but to do what he has done. Thirty-thousand words directly from Salinger would inevitably have strengthened or enriched this book, whose prose is pale and nervous, perhaps because of the restraints and inhibitions beneath which the rattled Hamilton was forced to work. There’s a chilling chapter about the disturbed soul who twisted the meaning of Catcher in the Rye into his excuse to assassinate John Lennon.The original manuscript, Hamilton says, “was not, in those days, really the book I had wanted it to be.” Presumably the present book is better than the abandoned manuscript, but of course I cannot know. His insistence on privacy has left fans forever curious about his encounters with Ernest Hemingway, who advised him on his stories during the war, and the she-said version of events from Joyce Maynard, who was only a teenager when she was wooed by the literary titan. He spent most of his adult life in a secluded house in New Hampshire. Salinger, who died in 2010, refused to talk to the press and emphasized that he wanted to be left alone. And while it’s fascinating to read about Salinger’s traumatic experiences fighting in World War II and dating Oona O’Neill before she married Charlie Chaplain, the contributors can only speculate on the author’s opinions. The book is composed entirely of endless quotes from Army buddies, family members, neighbors, ex-girlfriends and writers. In addition to their exhaustive 700-page biography, they’ve created an accompanying documentary that will be featured on PBS Masters in January.

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