When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion…Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won’t be asked. You won’t be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won’t be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won’t be asked if you were in good or bad form while you were working on it. You won’t even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished. . I’m so sure you’ll only get asked two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? …I think I’d give almost anything on Earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

From J.D. Salinger’s Seymour: An Introduction Pg. 160-1

(via joyinsomething)

View high resolution

thebasketofkisses:

dertrain:obscureallure:piggybankofthoughts:(via quote-book)

Salinger Like You've Never Seen Him →

citysleep:

Call it a coming attraction, because to know any more, you’ll have to wait until Shane Salerno is good and ready to tell you. Salerno, a Hollywood screen-writer (Shaft), has spent six years and millions of dollars researching the author’s mysterious world—though the details, such as the story behind this photo, he won’t divulge just yet. Like Franny Glass, who clung to her copy of The Way of a Pilgrim as a kind of dog-eared talisman, Salerno has a spiritual relationship with Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. He also has rules. “Do not read J. D. Salinger on a Kindle,” he says, with a snort of disgust. “Grab that broken paperback.” —Sarah Ball

"

‘I wish you’d get married,” Mrs. Glass said, abruptly, wistfully.

Everyone in the Glass family—Zooey certainly not least—was familiar with this sort of non sequitur from Mrs. Glass. It bloomed best, most sublimely, in the middle of an emotional flare up of just this kind. This time, it caught Zooey very much off guard, however. He gave an explosive sound, mostly through the nose, of either laughter or the opposite of laughter. Mrs Glass quickly and anxiously leaned forward to see which it was. It was laughter, more or less, and she sat back, relieved. ‘Well, I do,” she insisted. ‘Why don’t you?”

Relaxing his stance, Zooey took a folded linen handkerchief from his hip pocket, flipped it open, then used it to blow his nose once, twice, three times. He put away the handkerchief, saying, “I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window any more when you’re married.”

"

J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, pg 105-6

Salon Article by Matt Zoller Seitz

“If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies,” says Holden Caulfield. “Don’t even mention them to me.”

The young hero of J.D. Salinger’s 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye” is often described as one of the great unreliable narrators in American fiction — a character whose self-image is at odds with how he’s seen by the rest of the world as well as his older, wiser creator. But when a Daily Telegraph story suggested that the late, reclusive writer’s signature work might finally land on the big screen — after decades of Salinger telling an endless parade of Hollywood phonies to take their movie pitches and shove them — Holden’s gripe struck me as a rare instance of a quote worth taking at face value.

A convergence of factors makes it likely that somehow, someday, there will be a movie. True, a lawyer for the Salinger estate said, “There are no plans to sell the film rights.” But that only sounds definitive until you get to the part of the Telegraph story that says the writer’s estate could be hit with a huge, retroactive estate tax bill that could be settled fast by auctioning the film rights to “Catcher” — and that a 1957 letter by the author described those unsold rights as “a kind of insurance policy” that could support his wife and daughter if he ran out of money. When’s the last time a lawyer won an argument with an accountant?

“The Catcher in the Rye” should never be made into a movie. Period.

To entertain such thoughts requires the would-be adapter to ignore three strong arguments against adaptation: Holden’s opinion, Salinger’s wishes and the reader’s own idiosyncratic relationship with the novel.

Should Catcher in the Rye be made into a movie? Yes or no? If yes, who would you pick to direct and star?

Dedications

The Catcher in the Rye
to My Mother.

Nine Stories
to Dorothy Olding
and
Gus Lobrano

Franny and Zooey
As nearly as possible in the spirit of Matthew Salinger, age one, urging a luncheon companion to accept a cool lima bean, I urge my editor, mentor and (heaven help him) closest friend, William Shawn, genius domus of The New Yorker, lover of the long shot, protector of the unprolific, defender of the hopelessly flamboyant, most unreasonably modest of born great artist-editors, to accept this pretty skimpy-looking book.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
and
Seymour: An Introduction
If there is an amateur reader still left in the world—or anybody who just reads and runs—I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.

(via usedbuttons)

View high resolution

(via booklover)

Joyce Maynard

“Every generation thinks it’s special—my grandparents because they remember horses and buggies, my parents because of the Depression. The over-30’s are special because they knew the Red Scare of Korea, Chuck Berry and beatniks. My older sister is special because she belonged to the first generation of teen-agers (before that, people in their teens were adolescents), when being a teen-ager was still fun. And I—I am 18, caught in the middle. Mine is the generation of unfulfilled expectations. “When you’re older,” my mother promised, “you can wear lipstick.” But when the time came, of course, lipstick wasn’t being worn. “When we’re big, we’ll dance like that,” my friends and I whispered, watching Chubby Checker twist on “American Bandstand.” But we inherited no dance steps, ours was a limp, formless shrug to watered-down music that rarely made the feet tap. “Just wait till we can vote,” I said, bursting with 10-year-old fervor, ready to fast, freeze, march and die for peace and freedom as Joan Baez, barefoot, sang “We Shall Overcome.” Well, now we can vote, and we’re old enough to attend rallies and knock on doors and wave placards, and suddenly it doesn’t seem to matter any more.”

First paragraph of Joyce Maynard’s, An 18-Year-Old Looks Back On Life which was published in The New York Times Magazine, on April 23, 1972.

The piece caught the attention of the exclusive Salinger who, living in Cornish, New Hampshire, wrote a fan letter to Maynard. They would later exchange as many as 25 letters and she, only 18 at the time, would move in with the 53 year old and live with him for ten months.

They would split up over various differences and she would go on to auction off the letters he wrote her (for financial reasons) and write a memoir, At Home in the World which focused heavily on their relationship.

The letters were bought by computer programmer, Peter Norton for 156,500 dollars and returned to their rightful owner.