5 Things You Didn't Know About J.D. Salinger
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1. He donated his unpublished story ‘The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls’, written in 1947, to the Princeton library in 2010. The story is about the death of Kenneth Caulfield and contains the ‘greatest letter home from camp ever composed by man or boy’. This letter is sent from The Catcher in the Rye protagonist Holden Caulfield to his younger brother, Kenneth, who becomes ‘Allie’ in said novel. As per the requirements of Salinger’s donation to Princeton, the story cannot be published until fifty years after his death, which makes the earliest date it can be published as January 27th, 2060.
2. Two of the stories that make up Salinger’s Nine Stories (‘Down at the Dinghy’ and ‘De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period’) had been previously rejected by The New Yorker. The former was eventually published in Harper’s in April 1949 and the latter was judged as too short to tackle the complex religious concepts Salinger was aiming to explore.
3. The only film adaptation of Salinger’s work was My Foolish Heart, based on his short story ‘Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut’, and released in 1949. The film starred took huge liberties with the story’s original plot, transforming it from an ‘expose of suburban society’ into a soppy love story with a happy ending. The film horrified Salinger. Having relinquished all rights for the adaptation, he never again allowed a film adaptation of any of his written works.
4. Most people know that Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon, was arrested with his own personal copy of The Catcher in The Rye, and that John Hinckley Jr., the man who tried to assassinate Reagan, also had a copy of the book in his hotel room. Robert John Bardo’s story is less well known, but is equally chilling. After stalking My Sister Sam actress Rebecca Schaefer for three years, he shot her at her front doorstep in 1989, having become enraged by a scene from the film ‘Scenes from the Class Struggle In Beverly Hills’ in which she appears in bed with a male actor. Bardo was carrying a paperback copy of The Catcher in the Rye on the day of the murder, which he tossed onto the roof of a building as he fled. He insists the connection was coincidental and he was in no way trying to emulate either Chapman or Hinckley Jr.
5. The majority of Salinger’s short fiction concerns the various members of the Glass family, which, if you’re a Salinger fan, you probably already know. What you might not know is exactly how their lives come together chronologically. While I don’t possess a brain able to collate such things, I know of people who do, specifically, the gang at Dead Caulfields. Head here for a full breakdown of all things pertaining to The Glass Family.
Your thoughts: What's your favourite J.D. Salinger story, and why?
Read more: our earlier review of Salinger's 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish', which Salinger biographer Paul Alexander described as 'the story that would permanently change his standing in the literary community.'
