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 In the letters from Salinger to Ruth Smith Maier, a woman he
met while attending Ursinus College in Pennsylvania in 1938, the
two share stories about parenthood, working as a writer and
general banter about popular culture.
The letters, which experts say humanize the notoriously
reclusive author as he experiences a range of life-changing
events, were acquired by the Harry Ransom Center, a humanities
research library at the University of Texas, and made available
to researchers this week.
In the earliest correspondence from January 1941, a confident
22-year-old Jerry Salinger writes to Ruthie that he intends to
leave his mark as an author.
"Oh, but I'm good," he says in the single-spaced, typewritten
letter. "It will take time to convince the public, but (it)
shall be done."
He reminisces about his time and the people at Ursinus, giving a
hint of themes that would be a part of his later work.
"For every hundred phonies, there is one goodie, and that is a
better ratio than I find here in savage hometown New York," he
says.
The next letter is dated 17 years later in 1958. During the
intervening years, Salinger has been published in the New Yorker
magazine, served as a soldier in some of the most brutal World
War Two fighting in Europe, released his most famous novel "The
Catcher in the Rye" and the book "Nine Stories".
Alarmed by his sudden fame, Salinger had also become reclusive
since 1953, fiercely guarding his privacy in Cornish, a small
town in northwest New Hampshire.
In the letter, Salinger talks lovingly about his young daughter
Margaret, his fond memories of Ursinus and his disdain for the
trappings of fame.
"These days, almost any incoming news of my fiction either
irritates or chills, or just doesn't reach at all," he says.
Kenneth Slawenski, author of the acclaimed biography "J.D.
Salinger: A Life", said long-running correspondences were common
for the writer — such as one with a roommate from Valley Forge
Military Academy — but that few scholars knew about the stream
of letters that flowed between him and Maier.
"To my knowledge, Salinger never damned fame in itself (it is,
after all, essential to selling books) but his letters
frequently expressed disgust with the consequences of fame,"
Slawenski told Reuters in an email.
DISTRUST OF PUBLICATION
By 1969, Salinger was entrenched in the American mind as one of
the country's best-known recluses. He writes to Ruth that year
about taking enormous pleasure in watching his children grow and
leaving celebrity behind.
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 "In my worst times, years back, all letters
addressed to me were written in part or entirety in Holden
Calfieldese (sic). It was like being in Hell," he wrote, referring
to Holden Caulfield, the main character in "The Catcher in the Rye"
and mail he received from fans and scholars.
About nine years later, Salinger wrote to Ruth to
talk about the fun he had visiting his son Matthew, who was studying
in France, as the two went to cafes and took a road trip through the
Alps.
Salinger and Maier shared news about their children, praise for the
actress Mary Tyler Moore and snippets from their daily lives, which — by Salinger's account — had grown quite dull.
"I have no real news, and so little to say. I tend to think almost
exclusively in Fiction, these years. Which seems fair enough to me,
and after my taste, but leaves me short on any sparkling personal
news."
But Salinger was busy writing, telling Ruth's son Christopher that
for most of the decade of the 1970s, he had been turning out some of
his best fiction, writing "slowly, erratically but rather
enormously."
Biographer Slawenski said it is difficult to find
any period of Salinger's life when he did not claim to be producing
his best fiction.
Much of what Salinger wrote during his period of isolation will not
be seen until 2060, 50 years after his death, as he had stipulated.
The author was 91 when he died in 2010 of natural causes.
Three of those unpublished stories were leaked online late last year
with the source likely being from an unauthorized book printed
without Salinger's permission.
In his letters, Salinger also says he has no intention of having his
fiction staged or filmed, a comment likely directed at Hollywood
producers who have tried for years to bring works like "Catcher" to
the big screen.
In a 1977 letter to Maier's son, Salinger wrote that he wants his
fiction to be published, eventually, but not now.
"Publication tends, for me, at least, to put all work still in
progress in dire jeopardy. One reason being that I distrust the
finality of publication," Salinger said.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by
Gunna Dickson)
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