Salinger Page #7

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of the Hollywood producers.

And it's a great irony

because he was probably

the most illiterate

of the Hollywood producers.

The Epstein brothers,

who had written Casablanca',

they came to Goldwyn

with an idea for a movie

based on a short story

they had recently read

in the 'New Yorker'.

And the story was

'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut',

and the author

was a young J.D. Salinger,

who was just being talked about

a great deal.

So this appealed to Goldwyn,

who bought the rights

and turned it into a movie

called 'My Foolish Heart'.

I think every time an author

sells something to Hollywood,

part of him says to himself,

"Well, my work is so special.

Mine won't get changed."

You know, "And certainly,

they're not gonna rape it,"

as I think Hollywood did to

'Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut'.

Gosh, what about

the rest of YOUR life, El?

Please, darling, don't you

be crazy. You just go...

Mary Jane, I'll never tell.

The beauty of the short story

is how much Salinger left out.

And the great delight

for the Epsteins

was how much they could put in.

That's a very aristocratic ear.

Salinger's response

was extremely violent,

and he vowed never to sell

another work to Hollywood again.

It's that protectiveness

that actually led to

the end of our friendship.

Eventually,

I got a job as an editor

at 'Cosmopolitan' magazine,

which then was

a literary magazine

before Helen Gurley Brown

got hold of it

for 'Sex and the Single Girl'.

And in the course

of our poker game,

Jerry handed me a story

and said,

"Here. I think this is a good

story for 'Cosmopolitan'."

it was called 'Scratchy Needle

on a Phonograph Record'.

And he said, "But one thing -

"you tell your editor,

not one word can be changed,

"and that's up to you.

"You gotta watch it,

because they like to cut

"and they like to

make it fit a space.

"If they do that,

then there's no go."

He attached a note to it.

"Either as is or not at all."

And it was all fine,

but I forgot to check on

the title that they gave it.

Instead of 'Scratchy Needle

on a Phonograph Record',

they changed it to

'Blue Melody'.

I thought, well,

the best thing I can do

is meet this head-on.

So I called him and I said,

"Can we have a beer

at Chumley's tonight,"

or whatever.

And I met him,

and I had the magazine.

And I had a tough time sort of

getting around to the topic.

And after hemming and hawing,

he even said,

"Would you get to the point?

What's bothering you?"

And I said, "Jerry,

I have to explain this to you.

"I really very carefully

attended to

"the prose that you wrote

"so that nothing was changed.

"But unbeknownst to me, and

I have no control over this,

"because I am not

the fiction editor,

"they put

a different title on."

So he grabbed the magazine

out of my hand,

and he looked at it.

And his face turned...

...apoplectic red.

And he just spewed...

...an angry denunciation at me.

What kind of a friend was I?

How did I let this happen?

And I tried to

get a word in to say,

"You know, I have no control

"over what's done

in the final edit."

He said,

"You had to have control.

"I told you

you're in charge of it

"and I trusted you with it,

"and I'll never trust you again

in anything."

And he walked out. That's it.

Left me with my beer

sitting at the table.

And he took the magazine

with him.

When we next met, after

Daytona, was in the spring,

when I was in New York

with my family.

I was 14, and I can remember

exactly what I had on.

I had a little tan suit on,

with little white gloves

and a little straw hat.

And we were walking

down a street

and the straw hat blew off.

And I thought,

"Oh, how embarrassing."

And... he went

tearing down that street

laughing and chortling.

He came back

and formally gave me my hat,

which was a little bit bashed,

and I put it back on my head.

And he laughed about it

for about 15 minutes.

This is one of the letters

that Jerry sent me.

He was at the time writing

'The Catcher in the Rye'.

He felt nervous

about Holden's language.

He was worried about how it was

going to be received by people,

particularly people he loved.

He wanted people

to know absolutely

that he was trying to write

a good book.

Not just a bestseller -

a good book.

Along came the gentleman about

six years younger than I was.

And he had a big black dog.

He told me that all

he would be doing was writing.

No parties, no visitors.

He was a loner.

The perfect tenant for me.

And that's how I met

a man called J.D. Salinger.

And if his typewriter

was going,

I knew enough

not to intrude into him.

This was his own world.

George Orwell once said

that "Writing a book

"is a horrible,

exhausting struggle.

"One would never undertake

such a thing

"if one were not driven

by some demon."

And it looks to me that he had

demons that he was exorcising.

He came home and wrote about

this adolescent

at war with society.

That's when he found

the real Jerry Salinger voice,

so that he was

Holden Caulfield.

And he was able to

transmit that onto the page

so that you get

a real feel of the frustration

of every kid that age.

Jerry said there was

a great deal of Holden in him.

Holden was rejecting

the whole world of his parents.

He hated these prep

schools that he had gone to.

He had disdain

for all these people.

Wealth, fame, career,

possessions,

possessions, possessions.

Salinger saw America

as this shopping centre

that has lost its mind,

it's lost its soul.

He hated phoniness.

He just hated it.

Is it possible

to grow up and not sell out?

They're all there,

all of the Salinger diatribes

and all of his prejudices -

they're all in that book.

He didn't spend

just 10 years writing that book.

He spent 30 years writing

'Catcher in the Rye',

'cause everything in his life

up to that point

was funnelled into that book.

A book takes

the time that it needs,

and you don't

have a choice about it.

But don't worry.

Novels grow in the dark.

It was a channelling.

It's some kind

of miracle of ink

making flesh and blood.

You see the artist

at the peak of his powers.

Holden always imagined

millions of little kids

running to the field of rye

and having to save them

from going over the cliff.

The cliff of what?

The cliff towards adulthood.

It was an accumulation

of everything he had to say.

The great subversive,

anti-establishment book

of all time.

Salinger met with

an important editor,

Robert Giroux,

at Harcourt, Brace.

Giroux wanted him to publish

a collection of short stories.

He didn't hear anything

from Salinger for quite a while.

One morning,

Salinger walks in and said,

"You know, I don't think

we should publish

"that collection

of short stories.

"What we need to do

is publish my novel

"about this kid

who goes to New York

"and has an interesting time."

Eventually,

Salinger did deliver

'The Catcher in the Rye'

in manuscript

to Bob Giroux.

Giroux read the novel.

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