Respecting Mr. Salinger

Imagine yourself, for a moment, returning home after several years across the sea. You just fought in one of the most vicious & deadliest wars in human history. You miraculously stormed the beaches of Normandy, just barely survived the Battle of the Bulge, & discovered the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust as you march your way to victory; and all the while, you carry a little hand-written story in your pocket. A short story no more than six chapters long, that every once in a while you pull out and rework (time & again) into what will define you as a writer in your own time and beyond. What is this little story? The magnum opus of Jerome David Salinger. The Catcher in the Rye. One of the most famous & infamous novels of the modern era. A story about an idealistically lost teenager who struggles to find a sense of purpose in a world he sees as reeking of shallowness & superficiality. A story which is universally beloved & reviled by audiences galore. Yet, unlike other books of the same era & ilk, The Catcher in the Rye has never made a transition from the page to the screen, since it's release 70 years ago. Asking the question of why, is a question about what an author sees in their own material & how much of their passion lies within the text that does far more than simply represent the plot. For it also represents the unrest & raw strength of the author. In this specific case, it represents Salinger's true personality & the workings of his subconscious. By the end of this piece, you'll gain an understanding of not only why The Catcher in the Rye has never been made into a movie, but moreover, why a story like this one is much better off being confined to the written word.

Based on Salinger's own confessions, he began working on The Catcher in the Rye in 1940. At the time, he was taking writing classes with Whit Burnett at the Columbia University School of General Studies in Manahattan. Like many other students in class with hin, Salinger sought to become financially stable through his writing & even famous if the opprotunity came to him. Even going so far as to confiode in Burnett his eagerness to sell the rights of his earlier work to Hollwood studios. Furthermore his budding romance with Oona O'Neill (the daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill) seemed to be a move in the right direction. He was 22 while she was 16; and her connections to New York high society allowed Salinger to bump elbows with some of the biggest names in the country. However, Salinger personally found these encounters to be very awkward and stright up unpleasant. He despised the gatherings of pretenious socialites with their immense privilege & entitlement; people that he referred to as "phonies". Less than two years into their relationship would it suddenly begin to deteriorate. They would fidn themselves alternating between making out at one moment, to standing off against each other, toe to toe, the next; ultimatley persuading O'Neill to abandon Salinger, and with her history of being ignored by her work-addicted father, Eugene, she would eventually find love by marrying the 54 year old Charlie Chaplin at age 18.

Alone & devastated by her deciiosn tom marry a man 36 years her senior, Salinger's pain would carry on as he wrote short stories for The New Yorker magazine into the 1940's, as America thrust itself into the Second World War. As a draftee, Salinger found himself with a Sergeant's rank in the 12th U.S. Infantry, as they fought their way through Nazi occupied France & into the heart of Germany. Due to his expertise in French, German, & Italian, he was tasked with interrogating enemy prisoners; though, he never stopped writing throughout the course of his military career (even finding time to meet one of his literary heroes, Ernest Hemingway, and recieve valuable input on his work). Eventually, as a victim of P.T.S.D., Salinger was hospitalized; remarking that in retrospect, one never gets the smell of burning flesh out of their nose. No matter how long they live.

Upon his return to America, in 1946, Salinger brought with him a wife (former Nazi Party member, Sylvia Walter) and his handwritten novel. The marriage quickly ended in divorce, but the novel would continue to grow. Its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, would become Salinger's closest friend. His closest effort at fame would come in 1948. Following the release of his short story Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut in The New Yorker, Hollywood film producer Samuel Goldwyn bought the film rights, with the promise to give Salinger the advancement he so desperatley needed (despite Salinger's desire to make it a stage play, instead). Nevertheless, in 1949, the movie was released under the alternate title My Foolish Heart.

Despite Goldwyn's promise of the project being a garunteed hit, the movie was nothing less than a critical and box office disaster; with one of the biggest criticisms coming from how much the film was overly melodramatic & how it drastically deviated from the original source material. Feeling as though he'd been stabbed in the back by the film industry, Salinger vowd to never sell the film rights to his work to any studio ever again; and by 1951, Salinger finalized & published his wartime passion project, The Catcher in the Rye.

In the beggining, the book recieved great positive reviews by critics, sold was reprinted eight times following the first two months of publication, & would find itself on the New York Times' Betsellers List for 30 weeks; mounting up to over 65 million copies sold & turning J.D. Salinger into a household name. However, as time went on, it would become one of the most significant books of the 20th Century (for all the wrong reasons). One of the most common complaints about it, was the lack of any moral compass in the character of Holden Caulfield; as the character & his story began to represent an entire generation of adolescents, juveniles, & nonconformists, nicknamed "The Catcher Cult". Furthermore, conservative readers found more reason to despise the book do to it's heavy use of profanity. Just to scratch the surface,

• "Goddamn" appears 237 times in the text.
• "Hell" appears 89 times.
• "Bastard" appears 58 times.
• "Chrissakes" appears 38 times.

This may sound rather tame in modern day literature, but 7 decades ago, it was enough to get the book banned in schools and libraries across the country. By 1961, The Catcher in the Rye became one of the most censored books of all time & it's role in the world of American literature is still a subject of debate to this very day. For even with the success of the book, Salinger, himself, hated the idea of being in the spotlight as a consequence of it. Going so far as to isolate himself from the public (and even his own family) in 1953 & stop publishing his writings in 1965.

Though, he kept writing in seclusion for the next 40 years, some people wondered why he stopped publishing. The answer is the same reason why he secluded himself from the world & his loved ones. He considered it an invasion of his privacy. With the success of The Catcher in the Rye, he was now financially stable & with a newfound sense of freedom, he felt as though he no longer needed outside voices to read & criticize his work. Yet, his self-imposed exile into rural New Hampshire didn't stop the outside world from trying to look in. Salinger was solicited by numerous names in the entertainment industry, wanting to adapt his magnum opus for the screen and/or stage.

• Jerry Lewis
• Elia Kazan
• Billy Wilder
• Steven Spielberg
• Marlon Brando
• Jack Nicholson
• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Tobey Maguire
• Ethan Hawke
• John Cusack

Salinger turned down every offer that came his way; arguing that despite recognizing the book's potential as a play or a film, he personally belived that the role of Holden Caulfield was "unactable" by anybody except himself (that he alone was the only person on Earth capable of playing him honestly). No amount of money or name recognition attached to the offer would sway him; and if the author doesn't sell the film rights to a work bearing their name, there is no adaptation. Period. It also didn't make things better when in the years following his isolation, would his book become subject to some of the most appalling crimes in American history.

• 1980: John Lennon is shot & killed outside his New York City apartment by Mark David Chapman. When arrested, Chapman was found reading The Catcher in the Rye next to Lennon's body & used the book to justify the murder during his trial.

• 1981: President Ronald Reagan survives an assassination attempt by John Hinkley Jr. A copy of The Catcher in the Rye was found in his apartment while being searched for evidence.

• 1989: Actress Rebecca Schaeffer was killed by Robert John Bardo. When arrested, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye was found on his person.

Perhaps it's just an eerie coincidence that the book was correlated to these three high profile killings, but one thing was for sure. In the public's eye, The Catcher in the Rye was deemed a book with malevolent powers; all the while, J.D. Salinger continued to seclude himself further & further away from society, as his career defining book continued to be simultaneously loved & hated. To this day, the book contains a powerful mystique about itself. What is it about the book that can appatently inspire people to do something as extreme as murdering celebrities? This is where I say that had the book been adapted to a movie, the power of the text would've been weakened; making it unlikley that these killers would've been caught with a VHS tape starring the likes of Brando or a young DiCaprio. Though, at the end of the day, Salinger knew all too well what a bad adaptaion can do to an original source; ever since Samuel Goldwyn screwed him over with My Foolish Heart.

In 2009, European author Fredrik Colting (donning the psuedonym "John David California") published an unauthorized sequel, entitled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. The book chronicles a now elderly Holden Caulfield suffering from bladder problems escapes from a nursing home & makes his way back to New York City to live out his wandering of the city like he did in the past. Certainly an interesting concept for a sequel, but one that Salinger hated when he learned about it. So much so that he sued Colton; resulting in the unagthorized sequel to be banned in the United States. It just went to show how protective Salinger was of his work even up till his death in 2010, at the age of 91. Following his death, studios wondered how long it would take until they could finally adapt his work for the screen. Earlier on in the 50's Salinger contemplated the idea of passing on the film rights to his relatives & his blessing to sell them if necessary. Yet by that time, his separation with his first wife, Sylvia Walter, his second wife, Claire Douglas, and his daughter Margaret, he figured that trying to hand down the rights to them after the bridges were already burnt was a fool's errand.

Which leads us to today. After crunching the numbers, it can be concluded that under U.S. copywright law The Catcher in the Rye will not go into the public domain until 2046. To put that into context, I am 23 years old, writing this piece in 2021. When a film adaption of the book is legally possible to make, 25 years will have passed and I will be 48 years old. For those members of "The Catcher Cult", I say don't get too dissapointed. Supposedly a The Catcher in the Rye-styled movie is already out there. A 2002 comedy-drama film called Igby Goes Down, directed by Burr Steers, and starring the likes of Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, & Kieran Culkin.

Certainly a film like this mirrors the plot & emotional experience of The Catcher in the Rye, but, sadly, I must confess that this isn't so. Even Burr Steers confessed in an intreview that the film had less to do with the book & served more as an autiobiographical retelling of Steers' own upbringing in the upper classes of New York. Though, as of 2019, Salinger's son Matthew is working with his father's estate in an effort to publish a collection of his "secluded works" as well as make Salinger's saga of writings availible in digital format (due to the man's personal disapproval of ebooks & audio books). For in his mind and with all due respect to his father, he wouldn't want other people to not read his works; and since the man has passed on, the idea of people reading those stories he kept so close to himself won't bother him anymore. So, maybe (just maybe) a version of his magnum opus on screen may very well be on it's way sooner than expected.