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Lot 204
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J.D. Salinger Rare ALS "The Catcher in the Rye" "Holden Caulfield" Content, Fantastic!
J.D. Salinger Rare ALS "The Catcher in the Rye" "Holden Caulfield" Content, Fantastic!
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Description:

Salinger J. D.

J.D. Salinger Rare ALS "The Catcher in the Rye" "Holden Caulfield" Content, Fantastic!

 

J. D. SALINGER, Autograph Letter Signed “Jerry,” to Rose-Ellen Currie, March 2, 1955, Windsor, Vermont. 2 pp., 7.25" x 10.75", with copy of addressed envelope. Expected folds; excellent.

 

J. D. Salinger writes to a young writer in New York City about his recent wedding, her progress as a writer, and his recently published story “Franny.”

 

Complete Transcript:

"Wednesday [March 2, 1955]

Dear Rose-Ellen,

All explanation, clarification, anti-mystification, etc. of my long silence lies in the fact that I was married a short while ago. It’s all highly confidential, and for another few weeks I intend to pass the word along only to you and Santa Claus and maybe just one other member of the group. So keep mum, old friend.

Regardless of your flimsy attempts at masochism, self-negatism, etc., your letters are a joy, you ass, and I refuse to yield Lebensraum to Hermann Hesse. Just sit still. That’s all I have to say.

The little woman and I (as I always call her) are planning a great vegetable garden, and we hope you’ll honor us, this summer, by taking a few turns through the endives. The fact is, we have next to no friends, and we’re counting on your and Hui-upuy’s goodwill throughout eternity.

Never mind Partisan Review, that will out which will out. I warn you. The more you’ll eventually publish, the less and less there will be left of Rose-Ellen. I’m now a man of bits and fragments, so take heed. Them that have the Tao don’t speak of it, etc.

Thanks for the bolstering word on the Franny story. The magazine mail on it has been voluminous and terrible. You and you only could be counted on not to ask if Teddy were pregnant and whether Holden Caulfield pushes Franny into the swimming pool. What would I do without you?

With all affection, / Jerry"

 

In February 1955, Salinger married Claire Douglas (b. 1933), a student at Radcliffe College. She dropped out of school just months before her graduation. Certain elements of the story “Franny” are based on their relationship, including her ownership of the book The Way of the Pilgrim. They had two children before divorcing in 1966. She went on to become a clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst.

 

"Partisan Review" was a quarterly magazine published by the Communist Party, USA, in New York City from 1934 to 2003. It dealt with literature, politics, and cultural commentary.

 

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a German-born poet, novelist, and painter who received the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature. “Lebensraum” is the land or territory that a country’s leaders believe it requires in order to grow or flourish. The term is usually associated with Nazi Germany, as the Nazis used the idea of Lebensraum (“living space”) as the justification for Germany’s expansion.

 

Salinger here paraphrases the Taoist philosophy expressed in Tao Te Ching, “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”

 

The New Yorker published Salinger’s story “Franny” in its January 29, 1955, issue. He also makes references to Theodore “Teddy” McArdle, the central character in his short story “Teddy,” published in The New Yorker on January 31, 1953; and to Holden Caulfield, the protagonist and narrator of his novel "Catcher in the Rye", published in 1951. Salinger playfully jumbles the characters and their stories to illustrate the absurdity of his readers’ questions about his stories. Rather than asking if Franny is pregnant and whether Booper pushed Teddy into the pool, they ask if Teddy is pregnant and Caulfield pushed Franny into the pool.

 

J. D. Salinger (1919-2010) was born in Manhattan into a Jewish family, though his mother was a convert. He graduated from the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania in 1936 and attended New York University for part of a year. He studied the meat-importing business in Poland and Austria, but left just a month before Nazi Germany annexed Austria. Returning to the United States, he briefly attended Ursinus College and Columbia University. He published his first short story in the magazine "Story" in 1940. He began submitting short stories to The New Yorker, which rejected most, but accepted “Slight Rebellion off Madison” about a disaffected teenager named Holden Caulfield. However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor left the story “unpublishable,” and it did not appear until 1946. Salinger was drafted in 1942 and saw combat in Europe on D-Day, and at the Battle of the Bulge and other battles. He later served in counter-intelligence in the interrogation of prisoners and in Denazification duty in Germany for six months after the war ended. In 1948, he published “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” which received critical acclaim and earned him a contract with The New Yorker for future work. A 1949 film adaptation of one of his short stories failed, and Salinger never permitted film adaptations to be made from his stories. He published his most famous work, "The Catcher in the Rye", in 1951, about protagonist Holden Caulfield’s experiences in New York City after his expulsion from a college preparatory school. Although it was widely taught in schools, other schools banned it for its use of swear words and coarse language. Salinger became an adherent of Hinduism in 1952 and gradually withdrew from public view, publishing only a few stories for the rest of the decade. In the early 1960s, he published two volumes of short stories previously published in The New Yorker. His last published work appeared in 1965. For the next forty-five years, he lived a reclusive life in New Hampshire.

 

Rose-Ellen Currie (1930-2012) was born in New York, the daughter of an electrician and his Scottish wife. In the late 1950s, she wrote and published several short stories, including at least one in "The New Yorker". Around the same time, she left the manuscript of her first novel in a taxi and never recovered it. She worked as a copywriter and vice president for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency for twenty-four years. Currie published her only novel, "Available Light", in 1986, and a collection of short stories, "Moses Supposes", in 1994.

 

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

 

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