![]() ![]() He had Salinger’s best interest at heart. “I felt now I was in a position to tell my side of the story without, as Salinger was dead, betraying him,” Miller said in an email. Jean Miller spoke at length about their relationship and provided letters Salinger sent to her. –The end of a decades-long silence by a woman who as a teen in the 1950s formed an intense bond with Salinger and was a model for the title character in his story For Esme – With Love and Squalor. (A caption on the back reads: “The writer in our outfit, Jerry Salinger, taking time out to pose”). Salerno verified that the snapshot was the only known photo of Salinger working on The Catcher in the Rye. A mustachioed Salinger looks up with a warm but careful smile, a cigarette in hand. There was indeed a table, with an open notebook or journal on top, in or near a forest. “I remember sending out my assistant to run out and buy a magnifying glass.” It looks like he’s at a table,”’ Salerno said. “He (John Fitzgerald) called up and he said, ‘I don’t know what it is. The great prize was a World War II snapshot so tiny that no one at first could make out what it contained. Salerno, I knew that this would be the very vehicle to do so,” he said. “After many lengthy conversations with Mr. (Paul Fitzgerald died just months later.) Fitzgerald’s son, John, said in an email that his father had always respected Salinger’s privacy, but that the family also believed it was time to “shed light” on misinformation. Photographs, letters and other materials from Salinger friend Paul Fitzgerald, whose close bond with the author lasted from World War II to 2010, the year Salinger died. ![]() But “Salinger,” the book and movie, still features notable new material: For a time, he had an agreement with a Salinger family member – Salerno won’t say who – to cooperate on the project, but the deal fell through. Salerno interviewed hundreds of people and has amassed hundreds of documents, letters and photographs. He has folders marked “Personal Letters,” “Divorce Papers” and “The Vault/The Safe.” He has a rejection slip The New Yorker sent to Salinger, informing him they were not interested in The Catcher In the Rye. There are rare editions of Salinger books, including a reviewer’s copy of Franny and Zooey that includes the critic’s handwritten notes (“Owes a lot to Faulkner,” reads one comment). ![]() The results of his work can be found, in part, in a 4-room office suite in Brentwood. Salinger’s longtime publisher, Little, Brown and Company, has declined comment. Citing two independent sources, he has alleged that several more Salinger books are on the way, including new material on Holden Caulfield and on the Glass family that Salinger featured in Franny and Zooey and other books. Salerno has come as close as anyone to giving the public a peek into the safe in Cornish, N.H., where Salinger allegedly stashed his unreleased manuscripts. “When I get something in my head, I go after it with extreme passion, and I went after this for a decade with extreme passion,” Salerno, who reportedly negotiated 7-figure deals for each edition of “Salinger,” said during a recent weekend interview. He is, instead, a lifelong Salinger fan, a believer and a go-getter who has often succeeded simply by refusing to quit. He is not an experienced biographer, a trained academic or investigative journalist. Stating that he has found more than even he had imagined, including what the author might have written during the last half century of his life, Salerno is presenting his case in “Salinger,” a unique, 3-way project: A 700-page book, co-authored with David Shields a theatrical release distributed by the Weinstein Company and a TV documentary that will air on PBS in January as the 200th installment of “American Masters.”Įarnest and energetic with sharp, narrow blue eyes and dark, brushed-back hair that could qualify him as an honorary Baldwin brother, the 40-year-old Salerno seems an unlikely candidate for breaking Salinger ground. Salerno is finally opening up about a private quest he worked on for a decade, spending $2 million of his own money. Known until now as a screenwriter for “Armageddon” and “Savages,” working by day on a sequel to “Avatar,” he has taken on a surprising and news-making identity: the latest, and, apparently, greatest seeker of clues about J.D. LOS ANGELES – Shane Salerno’s phone never stops ringing. ![]()
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