Nine letters, two postcards from "Jerry" Salinger

October 24, 2013

Today on NPR’s Morning Edition, Susan Stamberg reported literary news that will please fans of the  author J. D. Salinger. Salinger’s most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, narrated by disaffected teen Holden Caulfield, captured the imagination salinger-s-letters-to-sheard_wide-32c2ef4bd3d5b2953a09e22494c487c5c9450db6-s4-c85of millions of readers and became an enduring icon of America’s youth in the early 50s. A new documentary, Salinger, by filmmaker Shane Salerno, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman coming this fall and a companion book explore the life of the reclusive author who died in 2010. Stamberg also related the story of Salinger’s first adoring fan, Marjorie Sheard, in her twenties (as was Salinger), who wrote him to praise stories of his that she’d seen in Esquire and Collier’s magazines. The two corresponded from 1941 to 1943, and the nine letters and two postcards he wrote to her were sold to the Morgan Library in NY city which is currently showing the never-before displayed letters.

Barbara L.


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