Ransom Center Magazine

J. D. Salinger

New J. D. Salinger biography draws on letters in Ransom Center’s collection

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Cover of "Salinger" by David Shields and Shane Salerno.
Cover of “Salinger” by David Shields and Shane Salerno.

In early September, David Shields and Shane Salerno published Salinger, an oral biography of the well-known author of The Catcher in the Rye and infamous recluse, J. D. Salinger. Along with the publication, Salerno released an accompanying documentary film of the same title that features interviews, footage, and photographs related to Salinger’s life and work. The documentary will air on PBS as part of the American Masters series on this Tuesday, January 21.

 

In addition to the commentary of his family, friends, and acquaintances, the written biography contains photos and personal documents, including letters to and from Salinger himself. A collection of Salinger’s manuscripts, galleys, page proofs, and correspondence resides at the Ransom Center, including manuscripts of unpublished stories and 38 letters from Salinger to Elizabeth Murray. The book references some of this correspondence, which lasted for nearly three decades.

 

Shields and Salerno also reveal Salinger’s unpublished work, which will be published intermittently in the coming years. Ultimately, Salinger, both biography and documentary, provides an opportunity for the public to revisit and re-evaluate the author’s hidden life and widely read work.

 

The Ransom Center recently acquired 21 new Salinger letters.

 

 

Ransom Center acquires 21 J. D. Salinger letters

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The Ransom Center has acquired 21 previously unrecorded and unpublished letters by author J. D. Salinger. The letters are accessible as part of the Ransom Center’s existing Salinger collection, which includes published and unpublished manuscripts, galleys, page proofs, and correspondence.

 

Most of the newly acquired letters are written by Salinger to Ruth Smith Maier, a classmate and friend he met at Ursinus College. Salinger attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, in the fall of 1938, but he quit midterm and returned to New York City. He and Maier maintained a 40-year correspondence in which Salinger commented on a wide range of topics including his literary ambitions, his writing, and his family life. A number of letters offer insight into his evolving attitude toward public exposure and cast light on his decision to withhold new work from public view.

 

In the earliest letter, the 22-year-old Salinger expresses confidence in his literary gifts: “Oh, but I’m good,” he writes Maier. “It will take time to convince the public, but [it] shall be done.” In later letters Salinger reminisces about his brief time at Ursinus College (“one of the last peaceful or simple or oddly comforting times of my life”) and comments on his second marriage and early fatherhood. Five letters from 1977 and 1978 are written to Ruth Maier’s son, Christopher. In one he offers an explanation for his decision to withhold his writing from the public, explaining “publication tends, for me, at least, to put all work still in progress in dire jeopardy . . . I distrust the finality of publication.”

 

The acquisition also includes copies of Ruth Smith Maier’s letters to Salinger and a draft of the first letter Christopher Maier sent the author.

 

Ransom Center Director Stephen Enniss notes the correspondence will be of particular interest to those who wish to understand Salinger’s withdrawal from public life. He adds, “It also humanizes the author, showing him confronting a range of life-changing events from marriage to fatherhood and his own aging.”

 

The Ransom Center’s Salinger collection was established in 1968 and has been augmented with subsequent additions over many years. The Ransom Center is one of a handful of institutions that hold original Salinger manuscripts, including Princeton University, Harvard University, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and the Morgan Library.