Free Republic

In November 1944, a young American soldier wrote back to his parents in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Six years earlier, he and his family had fled Germany for the United States, only weeks before Kristallnacht, the infamous Night of Broken Glass.Now here he was, having returned to the place where, had they stayed, he and his family may well have already perished. "So I am back where I wanted to be," the young man wrote. "I think of the cruelty and barbarism those people out there in the ruins showed when they were on top. And then I...

The man convicted of killing John Lennon more than four decades ago is up for parole for a 12th time. Mark David Chapman, 67, pleaded guilty to shooting Lennon as the Beatles icon returned to his Manhattan apartment building in December 1980. He was first eligible for parole in 2000 — and has previously been denied release 11 times. Chapman — an inmate at the Wende Correctional Facility in upstate New York — was a 25-year-old religious fanatic when he traveled from Hawaii to New York City armed with a .38 Special handgun, 14 hours of Beatles recordings, and a...

Tuesday is J.D. Salinger’s 100th birthday, but Holden Caulfield is still 17. The iconic teenager of “The Catcher in the Rye” is forever suspended in the amber of our youthful alienation. Although a few pious schools continue to ban Salinger’s only published novel, for millions of adults, a faded copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” is a sweet teenage treasure, as transgressive as a trophy from band camp. Ninth-graders who secretly read the book with a flashlight when it came out in 1951 are now in their 80s. To read it again as an adult is to feel Holden’s...

We don’t have to wonder what J.D Salinger would have thought of the world today even as Israel fights back mobs from Syria and prepares for more bloodlust from its enemies domestic and abroad. Salinger told it plainly and powerfully in his novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” published in 1951, and following that, in his 60 years of retreat into silence. He would have called his vow of silence, “The fire between the words.” ..... .... As part of the 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, Salinger was heroic at Utah Beach/D-Day and later at The Battle of the...

KERNERSVILLE, N.C.- A North Carolina collector is auctioning "The Catcher in the Rye" author J.D. Salinger's toilet on eBay with an asking price of $1 million. Rick Kohl of Kernersville-based webuytreasure.com said he might be open to accepting a smaller sum for the commode, which was taken from a New Hampshire home the notoriously reclusive author moved out of in the mid-1980s, the Charlotte News & Observer reported Thursday. "I bet it's worth $100,000," Kohl said. "Come on, it's J.D. Salinger's throne! We're talking 'Catcher in the Rye' here!" The auction runs for about 2 1/2 weeks.

Is Stranger in a Stranger Land by Robert Heinlein the Catcher in the Rye for the science-fiction set? Yes, I think you could say that about the 1962 Hugo winner in one important sense. When author J.D. Salinger died this past Wednesday, I must confess it was convenient for me (if not for him), because it got people talking about his most famous novel. The Catcher in the Rye occupies an interesting position in the literary landscape: It's inarguably a classic, and inarguably a popular classic at that — a book that a lot of people have not only heard...

J.D. Salinger, who died on Wednesday of natural causes, repeatedly brushed off entreaties to bring "The Catcher in the Rye" to the big screen from producers ranging from Billy Wilder to Steven Spielberg, according to EW.com. But a 1957 letter suggests Salinger was somewhat open to a posthumous adaptation of his classic. "Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there's an ever-looming possibility that I won't die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me...

The death this week of J.D. Salinger ends one of literature's most mysterious lives and intensifies one of its greatest mysteries: Was the author of "The Catcher in the Rye" keeping a stack of finished, unpublished manuscripts in a safe in his house in Cornish, N.H? Are they masterpieces, curiosities or random scribbles? And if there are publishable works, will the author's estate release them? The Salinger camp isn't talking. No comment, says his literary representative, Phyllis Westberg, of Harold Ober Associates Inc. [snip]

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

NEW YORK - J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H. "The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of...

The 90-year-old creator of "The Catcher in the Rye," as protective of his work as he is of his privacy, is seeking an injunction against the writer, publishers and distributor of a spinoff of the author's famous novel. Lawyers for Salinger filed the lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan on Monday, seeking to stop publication of what it says is a copycat book titled "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye," by someone writing under the name John David California. It also seeks unspecified damages. The lawsuit said the right to create a sequel to "The Catcher in the Rye"...

Reclusive author J.D. Salinger took legal action today over what he says is a copycat of his seminal work, The Catcher in the Rye, the Associated Press reports. Salinger’s lawyers filed suit in Manhattan federal court to recall the book 60 Years Later, thought to be a Catcher sequel by pseudonymous writer John David California. Salinger’s lawyers maintain that he retains sole rights to the Holden Caulfied character, and that in regards to any sequels, Salinger has “decidedly chosen not to exercise that right.”

<p>A FORMER staffer at Harold Ober Associates, which represents reclusive literary legend J.D. Salinger, is peddling a memoir that lifts the lid off Salinger's secretive life.</p> <p>The juiciest bits of Jaime Clarke's "O What Fun We'll Have! O The Times!" - leaked to publishers this week - involve the author of "The Catcher in the Rye," who lives in seclusion in Cornish, N.H.</p>