Lancelot Links (RIP JD edition)

Wednesday February 03, 2010

Lancelot Links (RIP JD edition)

My sister forwarded this Washington Post article on the unintentioned heartbreak we caused the publisher of Orchises Press, Roger Lathbury, who was all set to publish J.D. Salinger's “Hapworth 16, 1924” in January 1997 when I discovered it on amazon.com in October 1996, wrote about it briefly for a Seattle Times publication, then told my sister, who wrote about it, more prominently, for The Washington, D.C. Business Journal. Her article was picked up by The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, etc., and the ensuing publicity caused Salinger to withdraw permission to publish. I wrote about my experience in the matter here. The Wikipedia version is here. My apologies to Mr. Lathbury�and to myself, since I would have loved reading “Hapworth” in book form, no matter what I ultimately thought of it. According to the article, it took Salinger eight years to agree to let Lathbury publish “Hapworth.” If it had taken him six or seven, the book probably would've happened. Unfortunately, by the time he said yes we were in the dawn of the Internet age. And there are no secrets in the Internet age.
Don't miss the Times' “Walking in Holden's footsteps” literary map of Manhattan.
Here's Le Monde's version of the Salinger obituary.
And here's my friend Andy's poignant take on the influence of The Catcher in the Rye.
I also like this New York Times' piece on how “recluse” is in the eye of the beholder.
I linked to this last week but it's worth linking again: Steven Lomazow's post on the early, uncollected Salinger stories that I wrote about here. The post comes from Lomazow's blog on “the history, importance and joy of magazine collecting.”
Finally, Charles McGrath did a nice job on Salinger's obituary for The New York Times, although I would've changed the lead to read: “J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II, at a time when writers, American or otherwise, were thought to be important, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.” That's part of the tragedy for Salinger and us. Apparently he couldn't stand all that attention on his writing; but if he'd simply waited a few decades his writing would've received all of the lack of attention he ever wanted.