J.D. Salinger’s Son Has A Testy Temperament, Just Like His Father

The great novelist J.D. Salinger passed away in 2010 leaving many literary fans curious about his last years as a recluse. Like many literary enthusiasts, I wondered if Salinger kept writing and if there was any truth behind that rumored room in his apartment that was stacked with unpublished manuscripts. A year now after his passing, it’s still unclear what the great scribe was up to. However, Matt Salinger, J.D.’s son, is threatening legal action against an antiques dealer with a handwritten letter from the The Catcher In The Rye author posted on his website.

New York Post reports:

J.D. Salinger’s literary trust has threatened legal action against a Washingtonville, NY, memorabilia dealer, Gary Zimet, for posting on his site a 1957 letter he says was written by the reclusive author. The letter, which Zimet’s site, Moments in Time, keeps posted in full even though it was sold to a private collector, details why Salinger never allowed a film version of ”Catcher in the Rye” during his lifetime. ”Since there’s an ever-looming possibility that I won’t die rich,” the letter reads, ”I toy very seriously with leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end though, I might quickly add, to know that I won’t have to see the results of the transaction.”

The letter has been posted online for over a year which makes the lawsuit by Matt seem a bit silly. After all, if he was so concerned with the “infringement of my father’s, and now the Trust’s, intellectual property rights,” as stated in a letter he wrote to Gary Zimet, surely he would have taken action much sooner.

But J.D. too was known to be rather litigious and now it seems that Matt echoes his reclusive father in pursuing such lawsuit after so much time has lapsed. Like father, like son I suppose.

(photo: celebitchy.com)