J. D. Salinger - Legal Conflicts

Legal Conflicts

Although Salinger tried to escape public exposure as much as possible, he continued to struggle with unwanted attention from both the media and the public. Readers of his work and students from nearby Dartmouth College often came to Cornish in groups, hoping to catch a glimpse of him. In May 1986 Saligner learned that the British writer Ian Hamilton intended to publish a biography that made extensive use of letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends. Salinger sued to stop the book's publication. The court in Salinger v. Random House ruled that Hamilton's extensive use of the letters, including quotation and paraphrasing, was not acceptable since the author's right to control publication overrode the right of fair use. The book was not published. Later, Hamilton published In Search of J.D. Salinger: A Writing Life (1935–65), but this book was more about his experience in tracking down information and the copyright fights over the planned biography than about Salinger himself.

An unintended consequence of the lawsuit was that many details of Salinger's private life, including that he had spent the last twenty years writing, in his words, "Just a work of fiction ... That's all," became public in the form of court transcripts. Excerpts from his letters were also widely disseminated, most notably a bitter remark written in response to Oona O'Neill's marriage to Charlie Chaplin:

I can see them at home evenings. Chaplin squatting grey and nude, atop his chiffonier, swinging his thyroid around his head by his bamboo cane, like a dead rat. Oona in an aquamarine gown, applauding madly from the bathroom.

Salinger was romantically involved with television actress Elaine Joyce for several years in the 1980s. The relationship ended when he met Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker, whom he married around 1988. O'Neill, forty years his junior, once told Margaret Salinger that she and Salinger were trying to have a child.

In 1995, Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui released the film Pari, an unauthorized and loose adaptation of Salinger's Franny and Zooey. Though the film could be distributed legally in Iran since the country has no official copyright relations with the United States, Salinger had his lawyers block a planned screening of the film at the Lincoln Center in 1998. Mehrjui called Salinger's action "bewildering," explaining that he saw his film as "a kind of cultural exchange."

In 1996 Salinger gave a small publisher, Orchises Press, permission to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924", the previously uncollected novella. It was to be published that year, and listings for it appeared at Amazon.com and other book-sellers. After a flurry of articles and critical reviews of the story appeared in the press, the publication date was pushed back repeatedly before apparently being cancelled altogether. Amazon anticipated that Orchises would publish the story in January 2009, but at the time of his death it was still listed as "currently unavailable."

In June 2009 Salinger consulted lawyers about the upcoming publication in the US of an unauthorized sequel to The Catcher in the Rye written by Swedish book publisher Fredrik Colting under the pseudonym J. D. California. California's book is called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, and appears to pick up the story of Salinger's protagonist Holden Caulfield. In Salinger's novel, Caulfield is 17 years old, wandering the streets of New York after being expelled from his private school; the California book features a 76-year-old man, "Mr. C", musing on having escaped his nursing home. Salinger's New York literary agent Phyllis Westberg told Britain's Sunday Telegraph: "The matter has been turned over to a lawyer." The fact that little was known about Colting and the book was set to be published by a new publishing imprint called 'Windupbird Publishing' gave rise to speculation in literary circles that the whole thing might be a stunt. District court judge Deborah A. Batts issued an injunction which prevents the book from being published within the U.S. The book's author filed an appeal on July 23, 2009; it was heard in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on September 3, 2009. The case was ongoing as of February 2010.