Letters penned by reclusive author J.D. Salinger hit auction
http://www.thehour.com/news/article/Letters-penned-by-reclusive-author-J-D-Salinger-11956636.phpPublished 6:08 pm, Thursday, August 24, 2017
"Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger
"Catcher in the Rye," by J.D. Salinger
Photo: Contributed Photo / Contributed PhotoWESTPORT — The spirit of J.D. Salinger is returning to Westport. Kind of.
Four letters penned by the reclusive American author are available for sale by Westport-based University Archives. Three of the four letters were written in Westport where Salinger lived while writing “The Catcher in the Rye” — and all evoke that same narcissistic writing style which made the novel famous.
“What I think is really interesting is: Here they’ve returned home to Westport and they’ve been out and about everywhere, and here they are, back to the birthplace of ‘Catcher in the Rye,’” said John Reznikoff, founder and President of University Archives. Reznikoff, a Stamford native, is an expert authenticator for historical autographs.
“The letters are written in kind of sarcastic neoism and disdain for establishment which is kind of the point of ‘Catcher in the Rye,’” he said.
All four of the letters were written to Joyce Miller, a staffer at The New Yorker in the late 1940s and ’50s, when Salinger was publishing stories in the magazine and writing “The Catcher in the Rye.” Three of the letters come with the original envelopes with a return address of “Box 365, Westport, CT.” Salinger lived at an unknown address on Old Road in 1949 and 1950.
“As is known with Salinger, he was interested in young ladies and seduced them with his writing,” Reznikoff said. “We don’t know the full nature of their relationship, but there’s a lot of speculation out there.”
Two of the letters are in an online-only auction University Archives is conducting that goes live at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. The other two are for sale at fixed prices.
Of the two letters in the auction, one was typed and one was handwritten. The typed letter — from Westport, with a postmark of May 30, 1950 — is on a single page and is hand-signed “Love Jerry, Miss You.” In it, he alludes repeatedly to the piece he was writing and his deadline — “The Catcher in the Rye,” published in 1951. The typed letter has a starting bid of $3,500 and an estimated value of $7,000-$9,000.
The handwritten letter in the auction is six pages long, extensively and neatly penned by Salinger on both sides of three sheets of The Drake Hotel stationary. It is dated Feb. 19, 1969 — 19 years after his Westport life. That letter has a starting bid of $5,000 and is expected to finish at $10,000-$12,000.
In the letter, Salinger describes himself as “an egoist I remain and a graying child.”
“Years ago, I half-started to send you two drawings in ink I did, one of you and, narcissistically, one of me, as we looked to see each other, in turn outside your apartment building in White Plains. How many times I have remembered those particular appearances,” Salinger wrote.
The two fixed-price letters were handwritten a month apart, in Westport in May 1950. The one considered more desirable, with a selling price of $15,000, has Salinger telling Miller, “Thank God the sun is shining today” and “Friday I’ll see you. I can’t think of anything better than that.”
The other letter for sale, with a price of $8,500, is also a single page, handwritten and signed by Salinger. In it, he invites Miller to join him for an evening in New York City.
“Next Friday, the 19th, an old friend of mine in New York is throwing a May wine party in the late afternoon. Will you go with me? We could meet at, say, the Biltmore around 6:15, then later on have dinner and drive back to White Plains. I hope you can make it,” he wrote.
Reznikoff said it was easy to identify the Salinger letters as authentic.
“What any authenticator does ... they look at the handwriting and compare it to known handwriting examples,” Reznikoff said. “These reek of authenticity from the get-go because they are all to the same person and they’re entire letters. Forgers don’t forge entire hand-written letters.”
KKrasselt@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2563; @kaitlynkrasselt
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