Letters to J. D. Salinger [Hardcover]

Chris Kubica (Editor), Will Hochman (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0299178005 | ISBN-13: 978-0299178000 | Publication Date: March 28, 2002 | Edition: 1

"Some of us are angry, maestro, and you may not care. But I’m here to vent."—Alan Cheuse

He published his only novel more than fifty years ago. He has hardly been seen or heard from since 1965. Most writers fitting such a description are long forgotten, but if the novel is The Catcher in the Rye and the writer is J. D. Salinger . . . well, he’s the stuff of legends, the most famously reclusive writer of the twentieth century. If you could write to him, what would you say?

Salinger continues to maintain his silence, but Holden Caulfield, Franny and Zooey, and Seymour Glass—the unforgettable characters of his novel and short stories—continue to speak to generations of readers and writers. Letters to J.D.Salinger includes more than 150 personal letters addressed to Salinger from well-known writers, editors, critics, journalists, and other luminaries, as well as from students, teachers, and readers around the world, some of whom have just discovered Salinger for the first time. Their voices testify to the lasting impressions Salinger’s ideas and emotions have made on so many diverse lives.

Contributors include Marvin Bell, Frederick Busch, Stephen Collins, Nicholas Delbanco, Warren French, Herbert Gold, W. P. Kinsella, Molly McQuade, Stewart O’Nan, Robert O’Connor, Ellis Paul, Molly Peacock, Sanford Pinsker, George Plimpton, Gerald Rosen, Sid Salinger, David Shields, Joseph Skibell, Melanie Rae Thon, Alma Luz Villanueva, Katharine Weber, and many others.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I'm only writing to you because my analyst insisted," begins one of the missives in Letters to J.D. Salinger. These 70-some notes to the legendary recluse edited by Chris Kubica, who runs the Web site jdsalinger.com, and Will Hochman, a Southern Connecticut State University English professor come from prominent writers like Tom Robbins, Nicholas Delbanco, David Shields, as well as from teachers, high school students and other readers. They vary in tone from starry-eyed and humorous to hostile. "I think of people like Holden," writes one teenager, "who have loads of money to spend on fancy Ivy League schools and instead flunk out, and it makes me want to spit."
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

It's the Letters to designation that signals a new departure in literary criticism here. Editors Kubica and Hochman have compiled an entirely one-sided correspondence with a celebrated recluse famously determined to communicate with practically no one. Their project began with an open call to editors, writers, critics, academics--to anyone, in fact, who wished to visit their Web site--asking them to address letters to Salinger. The idea was not that they would actually get through to the Master but that their letters might see the light of day via publication in this book. And one senses throughout the volume the wistful hope that Salinger will eventually see this book and, in the depths of his seclusion, somehow respond. In its own odd way, it works--the contributions range from pretentious, academic minitreatises to truly thoughtful notes and queries to simple, heartfelt sentiments and complaints from legions of Holden Caulfield fans. Trygve Thoreson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (March 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299178005
• ISBN-13: 978-0299178000
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,266,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Kubica has done extensive reading and research on J. D. Salinger's life, works and criticism. He is very active in the literary community as a co-founder of a Chicago-based literary magazine entitled spelunker flophouse and has published poetry in a few literary magazines including The Long-Islander, Wayne State Literary Review, Camellia and Alternative Arts Literature.

He received his undergraduate degree in Theatre Arts and Cultural Studies/Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota.

Chris is also a world-reknowned FileMaker application developer and a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP).

Chris lives in North Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Joys of Reading Other People's Mail, September 3, 2002

By 

sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters to J. D. Salinger (Hardcover)

As J.D. Salinger, famous reclusive author of "Catcher in the Rye," rebuffs all requests for interviews and is said to consign fan letters to the garbage, most of these letters have a tenuous air. At least the writers can be assured their letters will be read, if not by Mr. Salinger (shame on him!), by other Salinger junkies.

The letters are divided into sections from Writers and Readers, Students and Teachers, and From the Web. The letters run the gamut from a touching letter to Holden "thanks for being your sixteen year old self forever" from Alma Luz Villanueva to a question from Joanne Cavanaugh Simpson: " In the end, I guess you, like Holden, decided not to ever tell anybody anything again. But even so, don't you miss everybody?"

Some letters are in the form of poems, some are breezy and informal ("Howzit goin' Jerry?"), others are painfully stiff, but almost all have the hope that J.D. will at some date, sometime read them. There is the query from a young poet in England that would like to know the proper pronunciation of "Zooey" since that is his name. His mother, in an excess of enthusiasm for Salinger, named him after that notable character, but never was quite sure how it was pronounced. An admiring e-mail from Nicole Corrow says, "--you're SO *fantastically* BRILLIANT you could make me relate to a whisk broom." The only one I found one huge yawn was a woman who quoted a rigidly boring section (looong) of her doctoral thesis in hopes, I presume, the master would read it and be properly impressed.

Editor Chris Kubica provides a lively introduction and Will Hochman does the honors in a postscript that nicely summarizes what we have read. I found the book sometimes amusing and frequently thoughtful. This is a handsomely produced book that would make a nice gift to your favorite Salingerophile.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Salinger reader's letter, February 14, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Letters to J. D. Salinger (Hardcover)

I a longtime reader of Salinger, instead of speaking about the letters to him add one of my own.


Dear J. D. Salinger,

It's been a long time, too long for me to believe. Those teenage years reading and rereading 'The Catcher in the Rye', and loving and enjoying its language and its special attitude towards the world. That defiance, quixotic gesture, crazy indescribable something , that only Holden had.
And then for the college years reading all I could get my hands on that you had written. And somehow here too identifying with the Glass family and my namesake Seymour (See- more) and finding in the love of literature and language again something inspiring , and hope-giving.
And I sense that something of all that did have a major influence on my life , did lead me to hear the sound of my own drummer, though I suspect my father and his story was the greater part of this.
Yet with the years I must admit that there has come a certain if not disillusionment then diminishment. I am sure it relates to the path I took in my life. I made my religious way by going back to where I thought I came from. To the Jewish people the Jewish religion, Israel. The Jewish half- side of you was more style and shtick than substance. And you found your religious home not in Tannach, (The Old Testament) but in the religious works of the Far East. Seymour Glass writes his double- barreled 'haiku' as his major literary creation. None of the Glasses know or care much about anything Jewish in religious terms.
I don't say this as criticism, but rather as simply pointing out that I went a different way. And that this means 'spiritually' you in these latter years as I have felt it little to give me.
Nonetheless I would very much like to thank you for the great pleasure and consolation your works have giben me through the years.
I would also like to thank you for the idea you gave me in speaking about Kafka Kierkegaard Van Gogh of a certain kind of literary creation,that I have in some way found myself devoted to.
I would like to thank you for teaching me a certain kind of love of literature and of life.
Your old and growing older admiring reader,
S.Freedman

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressions and emotions of people from all walks of life, May 10, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Letters to J. D. Salinger (Hardcover)

Collaboratively edited by Chris Kubica (operator of the jdsalinger.com website) and Will Hochman (Assistant Professor of English, Southern Connecticut State University) Letters To J. D. Salinger is a remarkable compendium over more than one hundred and fifty personal letters addressed to J. D. Salinger, the renowned American author of the timeless classic "The Catcher in the Rye." The diverse impressions and emotions of people from all walks of life who were influenced by Salinger's literary masterpiece makes for a rewarding reading with insight into the depths of the power truly great writing can have upon a human generation. Letters To J. D. Salinger is a unique and highly recommended reading for the legions of J. D. Salinger enthusiasts.