December 2019 Auction Ends Thursday, December 12th, 5pm Pacific
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/12/2019
Superb lot of letters by J.D. Salinger on writing, with content on developing characters, style, getting published, patience in one's career, innate talent, handling rejection, etc. Lot includes (1) a 3pp. single-spaced typed letter signed ''Jerry'' with copious content to a fellow, aspiring author Rose-Ellen Currie, with Salinger's hand edits throughout. Letter is accompanied by original mailing envelope with Salinger's embossed name and address; (2) Typed letter signed ''JDS'' in type; (3) Typed page spanning 1/2 page where Salinger critiques one of Currie's stories.
The three-page letter, dated 22 June 1958 is one of the most special Salinger letters we've encountered, with unusually thoughtful advice to a young author (''I hope you have an idea how lucky you are I feel this way''), who Salinger clearly admires but who he also takes to task for, among other things, putting commercial pursuits above all. In fact, Salinger ends the pen-pal relationship he's had with Currie here, for reasons outlined in the letter, reading in small part, ''...You're now such a committed writer, and I've made a big, big effort most of my professional life to stay away from brother and sister writers. I hope you have an idea how lucky you are I feel this way. I've never known a single writer who wasn't either an advice-giver or a trouble-maker or at least a terrible shop-talker, and there's absolutely nothing one writer has to say to another, you know. He says it anyway, though. The ten-book writer thinks the two-book writer doesn't write enough, isn't prolific enough, and the two-book writer thinks the ten-book man turns out too damn much...I'm going to say a mouthful, though, before I leave...''
Salinger then refers to a rejection letter that Currie received, ''...Everybody sees you're a talent, Rose-Ellen. Does that count for so little with you? You sound so wounded. Can't you stop a minute to be a little grateful that you are talented? Think of all the nice, witty girls there probably are who probably work a little harder than you do and who aren't talented at all. That's sad...you can look at Newman's letter in two ways, I think. As a Rejection Letter, period. Which is nothing to kill yourself about, you know. This'll go over big with you, I imagine, but I'll bet you anything I had more rejection slips (slips, not letters) from The New Yorker before I was eighteen than you've had to date. Funnier still, the magazine bought my first story in 1941 and didn't get around to publishing it till 1946...On the other hand, you can see Newman's letter as a letter of criticism, an absolutely sincere and very thoughtful attempt to tell you something he hopes will help you. I really think you'd be a very sensible girl if you'd take a good, hard look at your stories. And not particularly to check them for signs of my influence, my Idiom on your work...it would be very helpful to you in the long run if you decided not to look at any of my fiction, new or old. Your ear's too good. You can't help but pick up one or two little mannerisms, rythmns [sic], racy type approaches...I think you're pushing, pushing for a 'style,' a flair. If only you'd let that alone. To my mind, your TIB'S EVE very nearly didn't come off. I think it did come off only because you're a legitimate talent...You paid more attention to the presentation than to the people...the rest is haunted...I would swear you didn't work long enough or hard enough on those people...not one of these early stories looks personal enough to me. I want to see you write about what you don't want to write about but know damned well you should. Do you know what I mean? you seem to be writing much more from a need to publish than to see your people on the page. So much presentation and too little blood...it's slowing you up, getting you rejections, making you pick up ghosts. I think your craft would put you through so quickly, so easily it wouldn't even be funny if your characters would suddenly support your presentation, instead of vice versa...Show us a few characters who do, whom you'd give your soul to see on a page, and I'll bet you anything your 'style' troubles will be over for a while...I wonder a little if your prose itself isn't making a lot of the trouble...
I feel there's too much difference in the way you sound in your personal letters and the way you sound in a story. There should be a better balance between the two, I think. The letters are all yours, the stories belong to a talented, over-read (and under-read, too, I think) girl sitting at a typewriter and trying to get published. Incidentally, why have you signed a contract to do a novel? Do you have a novel, or do you just have an idea and a contract for doing one? I t doesn't sound good for your career. I hate the word Contract in exactly the same way I hate the word Yaddo. It smells more of writing for publication than for survival, for sanity. Everybody gets hungry as hell for publication - new writers most, of course, but nobody gets over it - but I think you should know which urge belongs where...Yaddo doesn't give a damn what will happen to you, and Simon & Schuster don't either, except in terms of Sales...I do think you're at a crucial point in your career, and The New Yorker hasn't a damn thing to do with it...What a shallow and crappy remark that was about your turning into another Mavis Gallant if you go on contributing to The New Yorker...some writers - girls especially - sometimes turn out more fiction than is good for them. But I don't think Mavis Gallant, just for one, does that. Neither does Jean Stafford, Dorothy Parker, Eudora Welty...Those girls are a damn site more dedicated and painstaking than any of those fish that do South-of-France stories for Harper's Bazaar. This is all probably offensive and unwelcome. I hope not too much.
I'm going to sum up anyway. You're talented, you're ambitious, you're nervous and arrogant at the same time - you're all the things a young writer probably has to be, but none of it is going to do you any immediate good - which is what you want - unless you make a bigger effort to put the horse before the cart, the story before the style, blood before ink, etc...I think only good can come from it if you take a good, hard look at your stories. You have all the brains needed to pull you out of this worry. I think you're going to be a good writer whether you do or don't take a good, hard look at your stories, but you're obviously in a hurry...I don't honestly even worry about your. I worry about the untalented, not the talented. Even if I've said anything harmful, I expect you to be smart enough to ignore it. And despite this formal Farewell, which I happen to mean, you know I expect good and big things from you. Yours, [signed] Jerry''.
Lot also includes a letter by Salinger dated only ''Sunday'', reading in part, ''Have no idea what you're talking about - tasteless intrusions, etc. In my opinion, you did only what any upstanding American girl would have done. Undoubtedly my bluntness, and the fact that Mr. A. invariable reminds me of a certain unmentionable part of a horse, that brought on all this shame and sorrow...Faithfully, JDS''.
The last piece of correspondence is a half-page typed critique by Salinger to Currie (addressed with her initials, ''R.E.C.'') on one of her stories, praising her on the main character, ''Excellent overtones and undertones...First rate descriptive presentations...a fine, subtle tension...'' Salinger then, however, tells her that the tension ''manifests itself now in mood more than in the design and patterns made by the sequences and development of the parts --- form equating itself with meaning...You mix a fascinating concoction with a fine and steady hand but what this liquid is for, whether for the world's benefit or destruction, I can't guess...You're leaving me, in other words, in the wrong frame of mind.''
Four pages on four sheets measure 8.5'' x 11'', and half sheet measures approximately 8.5'' x 5.5''. Envelope postmarked 23 June 1958 measures 6.75'' x 3.75''. Folds, and a few small holes to the unsigned letter. Overall very good to near fine condition. Incidentally, Rose-Ellen Currie would go on to publish several short stories in the late 1950s, including one in ''The New Yorker''. Around the same time, she tragically lost the manuscript for her novel in a New York taxi and never recovered it. She would ultimately publish a novel entitled ''Available Light'' in 1986, and a collection of short stories, ''Moses Supposes'', in 1994. A very rare and personal collection of correspondence by Salinger.
Fantastic Lot of Letters by J.D. Salinger on Writing -- ''...I hate the word Contract...it smells more of writing for publication than for survival, for sanity...''
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