Now the daughter is in on the act
Mark Kuhar (pitquar@en.com)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 08:00:06 -0500
Salinger's Daughter Writing Book
By VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Fresh from the auction of his old love letters,
reclusive author J.D. Salinger has another threat to his privacy
looming -- this time from his daughter.
What Peggy Salinger will reveal in a memoir to be published next
year is a closely guarded secret. The book is tentatively titled ``The
Dream Catcher,'' a play on her father's landmark 1951 novel,
``Catcher in the Rye.''
Her attorney, Philip Cowan, said Thursday that it will be ``an
interesting book, and I'm looking forward to reading it myself.''
Ms. Salinger, 43, received an advance of at least $250,000, The New
York Observer reported. The memoir is scheduled for publication in
the fall of 2000 by Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books.
Yet even as a memoirist, Ms. Salinger is hewing to her father's
secretive ways. Cowan said he doesn't know what his client does for a
living, or whether she is married. He wouldn't say where she lives.
(``Let me put it this way, she doesn't live in Tibet.'')
The elder Salinger, 80, lives in Cornish, N.H., and has not published
in 34 years.
This week, 14 letters he wrote to onetime lover Joyce Maynard were
auctioned. The letters from the early 1970s sold for $156,500 on
Tuesday to a retired California software millionaire who promised to
return them to the author.
Last year, Maynard's own memoir detailed her youthful dalliance with
Salinger.