The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
J.D. Salinger, author of the classic novel The Catcher in the Rye, has filed a copyright lawsuit in Manhattan federal court, seeking to stop the distribution of a supposed sequel to Catcher. The NY Post reports that the move was to “block an anonymous author from cashing in on the iconic coming-of-age novel with a follow-up titled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.
The author goes by the name of John David California and the sequel follows a protagonist named as “Mr. C” (Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). He is living in a retirement home as a 76 year old man and he left to visit many of the places Holden Caulfield did in Catcher.
In the filed complaint, Salinger notes that he has never permitted any adaptations of his work and has turned away Hollywood figures such as Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg who have sought to “make a film version of The Catcher in the Rye. In his lawsuit, he reported that “As of May 27, 2009…’The Catcher in the Rye’ currently sells more copies on Amazon.com” than the first Harry Potter book, “The DaVinci Code,” “Of Mice and Men,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” His book, Salinger notes, “has taken on a specific place in American culture and is the benchmark against which any coming-of-age story is measured.
Even though Salinger is already 90 years old, he is well aware of the influence and impact his classic novel is making. Is he wins, all of California’s copies of the book will be destroyed, and “he’s also seeking unspecified damages from the alleged copycat author, saying his copyright ‘is worth an enormous amount of money.’”
The book is currently available in England and is scheduled to be sold in the U.S. beginning in mid-September.
