The Catcher In The Rye.

SALINGER, J.D.

Item Number: 143733

Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

First edition of Salinger’s masterpiece with a typed letter signed by him. Octavo, original black cloth. Accompanied by a typed letter signed by J.D. Salinger on New Yorker letterhead which reads in ful: “March 22, 1961 Dear Mrs. Scholes, Thanks so much for that warmhearted, if overly generous, letter. I’m grateful for all of it. I do plan to go on with the Glass stories. Many thanks, and all good wishes. Sincerely, “J.D. Salinger.”

The recipient, Joan Scholes was married to American literary critic and theorist Robert Scholes. Joan and Robert admired Salinger’s work and even ardently defended it on occasion; they notably submitted a sensational Letter to the Editor of the New York Times on October 8, 1961 correcting “some misstatements of fact and misleading implications in John Updike’s [September 17, 1961] review of ‘Franny and Zooey’ by J.D. Salinger” which they believed to be a “hostile critical appraisal.”

Their letter read in full: “To the Editor: Please allow us to correct some of the misstatements of fact and misleading implications in John Updike’s review of ‘Franny and Zooey’ by J.D. Salinger. The first Glass story was neither ‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters’ (as Mr. Updike calls it on page 1) nor ‘Hoist High the Roof Beam, Carpenters’ (as he calls it on page 52) but ‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish,’ which appeared in The New Yorker in 1948 and was later collected in ‘Nine Stories.’ Mr. Updike says on page 1 that ‘Franny never mentions any brothers.’ On page 28 of ‘Franny and Zooey’ Franny says, ‘It was just that I would’ve been ashamed if, say, anybody I respected — my brothers for example – – came and heard me deliver some of the lines I had to say.’ This is important because in ‘Zooey’ it develops that Zooey and Buddy had been at one of her performances and had heard her with approval and admiration.

Mr. Updike implies on page 1 that Mr. Salinger carelessly allows two versions of Franny’s acquisition of her little religious book to stand in the two stories. But it is made perfectly clear in ‘Zooey’ (100, 101) that she did not tell Lane Coutell the truth; indeed, who would expect Franny to have told the insensitive Coutell the truth in the first place? Her lie in ‘Franny’ is quite in keeping with her other furtive attempts to keep the true nature of her spiritual crisis from her date. We make no attempt to quarrel here with Mr. Updike’s hostile critical appraisal of ‘Franny and Zooey.’ But we ask in all sincerity whether so many obvious errors in such a short review do not cast serious doubts on Mr. Updike’s thoroughness and critical balance. Joan and Robert Scholes Charlottesville, Va.”

Updike soon responded to the Scholes in a somewhat curt Letter to the Editor of his own, concluding, “I should be sorry to believe that even the most ardent Salingerite could honestly regard my review as hostile. I did not mean it to be so and, on rereading it, do not find it so.”

Very good in a good dust jacket. An excellent association.

Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher In the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been synonymous with "cynical adolescent." Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in his sixteen-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. It begins,"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them."