Word: hamilton
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Opposed by his subject and restricted by the courts, Ian Hamilton has still produced a canny, engaging biography of J. D. Salinger...
...Hamilton. Before being allowed to publish In Search of J.D. Salinger, the British critic, poet and biographer (Robert Lowell) was put through two rewrites and 1 1/2 years of legal proceedings, culminating in a landmark court ruling that many publishing insiders fear will hamper the future practice of biography. Hamilton's trouble started when he came across more than 100 unpublished letters, stored mainly in the libraries of Princeton and the University of Texas at Austin. The correspondence dates from 1939 to 1961, and provided him with a rich deposit of raw material and, at first, quotations. Salinger apparently...
Most of the letters were written to Whit Burnett, Salinger's teacher and the editor of Story magazine; Elizabeth Murray, a friend; Judge Learned Hand, a New England neighbor; and Hamish Hamilton and Roger Machell, the author's British publishers. The young Salinger was full of strong opinions and pithy wisecracks. His view of U.S. publishing: "Everybody over here who's ever taught Senior English for a couple of semesters, or worked for a good upholsterer, has considered himself qualified to collect and edit a short story anthology...
...book dealer provided Salinger with a galley of Hamilton's original work, then titled J.D. Salinger: A Writing Life. Salinger immediately objected and had the correspondence copyrighted, an act that paved the way for court action but allowed anyone to read his mail at the Library of Congress. Hamilton agreed to paraphrase most of the letters rather than quote from them and, thinking the matter settled, sent a revised manuscript to his publisher...
Salinger sued. The lower court found that Hamilton had made "fair use" of the letters. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed the ruling in a decision that not only reinforced existing copyright law but also limited the manner in which a writer could describe copyrighted material in his own words. Hamilton went reeling back to his writing table, and the publishing business went into a tizzy. "Biography is a legitimate literary pursuit," says Jason Epstein, Hamilton's editor at Random House. "Salinger's reluctance to be written about, if ceded, could threaten the whole genre...