Catcher in the Rye II?
Fresh from receiving the hallowed accolade of induction into the Bookmarking Book Covers Hall of Fame, J.D. Salinger’s immortal Catcher in the Rye is in the headlines again. In slightly more momentous news, Salinger has sued an anonymous first-time novelist whose book 60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye allegedly features a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield who escapes from a nursing home and again wanders through Manhattan, presumably in search of a better book title.
The Smoking Gun has obtained parts of Salinger’s 11-page legal action vs. “John Doe, writing under the name John David California,” and it makes for some fascinating reading. The copyright infringement complaint versus the “unauthorized sequel” even features several pages of plot summary and analysis of Salinger’s novel in addition to a description of its “extraordinary critical praise.”
In describing its “extraordinary commercial success,” the legal brief notes that, “As of May 29, 2009 — 58 years after its publication — The Catcher in the Rye currently sells more copies on Amazon.com than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The DaVinci Code, To Kill a Mockingbird, or Of Mice and Men.” It also notes Holden Caulfield’s status as a “cultural icon” to whom other literary and pop-culture figures have been compared for almost 60 years.
In another interesting nugget, the brief describes the efforts of “numerous filmmakers — including Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg” to purchase film rights to Salinger’s novel. The author has always refused to authorize any work derivative of The Catcher in the Rye, and he is quoted as saying, “There’s no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It’s all there. Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.”
The brief concludes, “Salinger’s copyright in The Catcher in the Rye is worth an enormous amount of money and his right of first publication of a sequel is likewise of great monetary value. His right not to publish a sequel is unquantifiable.”
The Guardian UK’s Oliver Marre helpfully speculates here on a number of other sequels to classics that would be best left alone, and this excellent piece from the same paper’s Stuart Evers describes the project’s ridiculousness thusly: “Its gum-tighteningly awful title can only hint at the disaster lurking within.”
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The desire for vast amounts of money must override the incredible hassle awaiting this author, his publishers, and distributor. Can’t think of any other reason why they would court such litigious disaster! Stupid!
To “stupidity,” I’ll add the description “sadistic” since this sounds like the last thing a 90-year-old recluse needs to be dealing with right now in his life.