Salinger, J.D.

3 pages (11 x 8 ½ and 8 ½ x 5 ½ in.) on yellow typing paper, signed (“x x JDS” and “JDS”), from Windsor VT, dated 17 May and 26 August 1985, to Celia Bland (in Oxford, England, and Northeast Harbor, Maine); horizontal and vertical folds. Typed envelopes. Housed in a half blue morocco clamshell case.

[with]:
[J. D. Salinger, contributor]. The Kit Book for Soldiers, Sailors and Marines. Edited by E. X. Pastor. Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1942. 8vo (6 x 4 ½ in.). Numerous color and black-and-white cartoon illustrations. Publisher’s pictorial boards; some rubbing. Original printed pictorial mailing carton; some wear, but generally good and never used for mailing. Housed in half brown morocco slipcase and chemise.

Two fine letters from Salinger to poet Celia Bland with a copy of Salinger’s first publication in book form.

J. D. Salinger first met poet Celia Bland (now Associate Director of the Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking, Bard College) when she was an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College and a friend of Sophie Pratt, another Sarah Lawrence student who lived near Salinger in New England. The May 1985 letter was written when Bland was living in England and studying at Oxford. “Where, when, and what time of day or night were you born …? (I play, not very seriously, but I do play with the planets, the moon, the sun. Trivial, I know, but I like to know where Jupiter, particularly, was at the birth of anybody who shoots something to me in the mail.)” Salinger goes on to say he is leaving shortly for a 24-hour “jaunt” to California for his son Matthew’s wedding. “I loathe airports, hotels, most forms motion of any kind.” He goes on to relate his misadventure in going to England to see his daughter Peggy, only to discover she had gone to the U.S. for a few days. “Had a nice week in London alone anyway. Phoned no one, saw no one. Hunted down some out-of-print books, but not successfully — I always do better, best, in Boston on old books. Went to theater often, not out of love for the Theater (haven’t any) but out of affection for the physical theater in London — the old Haymarket, etc., and especially the tiny theater where Leo Mc Kern was playing in something pretty awful. Walked, bus’d, taxi’d. Went to Zoo …. Not a sign of [Sherlock] Holmes, anywhere, but then there never is. I go over for a week every couple of years or so, but most of what I go to see or walk past existed solely in fiction or fancy, not in fact. Wasn’t bad at all, though, in blackouts during the war. One really stumbled, bumped into things, but really, as in the old gas-lit streets when the fog rolled in.” Turning to literature, Salinger muses on William Hazlitt: “He’s sharp, clear, and have always liked something about his personal unpopularity. He knew Coleridge, yes, and probably the Wordsworths, but he was not, let’s say, a member, and I find that rather commending in itself. I remember Virginia Woolf wrote about him with admiration, in the unwholehearted and practical way she bestowed admiration on people and subjects worthy of grist for her essays or letters or diaries.”
The August letter begins with Salinger explaining why he is not currently writing very many letters. “The truth be told, I am, at least as far as I’m able or permitted by the people who send out bills, making a stab at withdrawing from the mails entirely. Have even considered printing a small announcement to that effect in some publication that everybody reads, like Woodman of the World or The Canadian Needlewoman. It’s mainly that I’m seated here at work most of the day and a fair part of the night, and then another couple of hours just trying to reduce the little pile of unanswered letters, bills, etc., and have decided to leave off for a year or two.” Bland is on holiday in Maine when Salinger posts this letter, and he remarks, “Maine, indeed. I got hooked — tricked, really into joining some Maine people who knew or befriended my daughter into getting on a damned sailboat and cruising endlessly up Nova Scotia way, all in unimaginable matey tight quarters and surrounded by campers’ plastic plates and sodden heads of lettuce …. Yes, I did go to my son’s wedding in California, and no, since, you ask, I didn’t cry …. Had some dinner in Chinatown with my daughter afterward and then caught the late plane back to Boston. Am not, on the whole, the most partisan or congenial sort of member of the wedding or graduation parties, even when people I care greatly about are involved. I was happy, of course to see Matthew looking happy.”

The copy of The Kit Book included with the letters is a first edition, first issue. Salinger’s contribution, the short story “The Hang of It,” marked his first appearance in a book. The story had originally been published in Collier’s. This publication was created for distribution to military personnel stationed abroad during World War II.

Two very fine letters, in which Salinger discusses 1980’s London and his fondness for that city during the blackouts of World War II, his desire to withdraw from the world and avoid social situations (weddings, graduations, boat trips, personal letters, etc.), his opinions of Hazlitt and Woolf, his interest in astrology, and other topics.