Word: hamilton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...paraphrasing Salinger's words, Hamilton believed he was within legal bounds. But the court signaled otherwise: "The biographer has no inherent right to copy the 'accuracy' or the 'vividness' of the letter writer's expression." For example, in 1941 Salinger dated Oona O'Neill, daughter of Playwright Eugene O'Neill and future wife of Charlie Chaplin. In one unpublished letter, Salinger imagined a scene from the couple's domestic life: "I can see them at home evenings. Chaplin squatting grey and nude, atop his chiffonier, swinging his thyroid around his head by his bamboo cane, like a dead rat. Oona...
Despite all the fuss, Hamilton's book emerges as a canny and engaging variation on that old journalistic ploy: how to write a lively story about not getting the story. In Search of J.D. Salinger is basically a tour de force, impressively written but a bit precious. The author invents an alter ego , character who prods the legally lamed Ian Hamilton to get on with his project despite the court's restrictions on paraphrasing. He also takes the liberty of imagining what Salinger might say to him: "It is you I hate. You are a snooper and a thief...
...Hamilton provides no startling news about his reclusive quarry. Rumors emerge that Salinger has two finished manuscripts locked away, but there is no information about their contents. Instead Hamilton weaves colorful details into what was previously a ragged chronology about Salinger, the misfit son of a Scottish mother and a Jewish father who imported hams and cheeses from Europe. The Salingers were well off, and Sonny, as Jerome David was sometimes called, had New York City as his playground. There were the underachieving school years at Valley Forge Military Academy (the Pencey Prep of Catcher), the brief attendance...
...Among Hamilton's literary anecdotes is the story of the publishing house that missed landing The Catcher in the Rye when a vice president sent the manuscript to the textbook department because he had heard the story was about a preppie...
...Hamilton's search for Salinger leads him into the author's fiction, where he finds autobiographical inspiration. The city and suburban settings of Nine Stories reflect Salinger's Manhattan youth and his adult stint among the commuters of Westport, Conn. The soldier in the magical For Esme -- with Love and Squalor suffers from a case of nerves not unlike the symptoms Salinger described in a letter to Hemingway. Models are identified for members of the Glass family, the precocious and haunting characters who ride the time loops of stories as early as A Perfect Day for Bananafish and as late...