Lately I’ve noticed, what feels to me, some sort of backlash against J.D. Salinger. Maybe I’m way off base, but people just don’t seem to like Salinger anymore. He’s no longer fashionable. Maybe he’s just been out of the public mind for so long, people forgot about his continued existence (he’s alive and he’s 90 years old). Not me. While I don’t read Salinger as often as I used to, he’ll always hold a place in my heart as one of the first authors who inspired me to write. I would be lying if I said I didn’t totally try to mimic his dialogue, a facet of his writing that I find to be, frankly, impeccable. He’s not just the Catcher in the Rye. No, Salinger’s got some great writing apart from his most popular (and only) novel. If your experience with Jerome David is limited to Catcher, do yourself a favor and check out his other work. I recommend Franny and Zooey to start (aside: if you’re wondering, I pronounce it with a long “o”, like “zoo” — I do this because Zooey is short for Zachary and being a diminutive nickname, I feel like it would have a goofy tint to it; it could have stemmed from another member of the Glass family, Franny perhaps, being unable to correctly pronounced his name during infancy. Besides, Zoe, the name pronounced with a short “o,” is a female name and Zooey is a man. It is your prerogative to pronounce it anyway you like but the only person who could possibly convince me that it’s pronounced like the female Zoe/Zoey is Salinger himself.)

In addition to my love of Salinger, I also love used books. Thus, I’d like to present to you my Salinger library. I’ve collected these editions over the past decade or so and while none of them are first editions or necessarily rare, they mean a lot to me in their being vintage and being the books that really helped me come of age as a writer. I have, of course, had copies of the typical “white cover with rainbow” editions that have been around since the 90s, but these come and go from my collection as I give or loan them out.  I also have, and have had for over a decade, a collection of Salinger’s 22 uncollected stories. These stories were published early in his career in various magazines and he, for whatever reason, decided they weren’t good enough to collect. I’m sure that when Salinger finally departs this world, we’ll see these stories released to the public along with whatever else he has been working on for the past 50 years. I got my copy of his 22 stories during the early days of eBay (when their privacy rules were a bit more lax). I had won a Pency Prep (Holden Caulfield’s high school) sticker that was meant to look like the clear college/university stickers people put on their cars and was contacted by someone in LA who had taken the time to research the stories at his local library, make copies, and bind them together in an 8 1/2 by 11 book. I cherish this book because it is awesome ephemera. I can see all the strange ads from the magazines of the 40s and 50s, see the drawings and pictures that originally accompanied Salinger’s stories, and I was able to read stories that almost no one I knew had ever read. Now, though, you can read these stories online. Lucky you!

We’ve probably all seen my edition of Catcher in the Rye — it’s pretty iconic. My copy is still very clean, no discoloration or stains or tears; it’s from 1986 by Bantam Books and unfortunately there is no indication on the copyright page as to who designed it. But it’s a beautifully simple design, yellow-orange text on a burgundy background, exactly the same on the front and back covers. Just a great design. It’s very similar in design to my editions of Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction. These latter two books, however, use a more Arabic script looking font. Raise High has a dark yellow cover with two white lines across the book about three quarters of the way down. This edition is the 18th printing, 1977, by Bantam Books. My particular copy is a former library edition, still having an ‘S’ taped onto the spine for easy filing and has “Dearborn Dept. of Libraries” stamped on the top edge (I got it in Michigan years ago at a second-hand bookstore). My bookmark in the book, which came stuffed between the pages when I bought the book, is a 1982 Detroit Tigers schedule, sponsored by Stroh’s Beer. The cover is a little beat up and has tape at parts, but it’s still very nice and readable.

My copy of Franny and Zooey was purchased at Carol’s Paperbacks Plus in Waterford, Michigan a long time ago (I know because it bears this bookstore’s stamp). It’s pretty well beat up, has a circle stain on the cover as though somebody at one time rested a coffee cup there. It’s of similar design to Raise High, a comparable font but slightly different, with an off-white cover and two green lines about three quarters the way down. The edition is by Bantam and is dated October 1977. What’s so excellent about this copy of mine is the inscription. This copy was a gift at one time, from “Juanita” to “Juan.” The inscription (pictured below) reads: “Greetings Juan! May love and truth embrace you and carry you thru the impossible. Always, your Cosmic messenger and twin sister. Juanita.” Also, opposite this inscription, is the Zen koan Salinger himself put into Nine Stories. That is: “We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping? – A ZEN KOAN.” Thanks for this book, Juanita. It means a lot to me.

My copy of Franny and Zooey also came with its own bookmark; in this case, it is somebody’s shopping list (Juan’s maybe?) outlining that the shopper is looking to “find natural ways to heal the liver” including “food, herbs, vitamins, ginseng, weightloss, hairloss” and “look up Zyrtec.” The list includes other things, some illegible to me, but you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Moving on to Nine Stories, you’ll notice a really interesting cover; listed in differently colored blocks are the names of each of the included stories. Again, the front and back covers are identical. Strangely, Bantam doesn’t tell me the year of this particular edition. It does say that it is the 20th printing and listed are all of the other printings, 1st through 15th with their respective years, while 16th through 20th are absent the year. The 15th printing was in September 1971. Throughout the 60s, the book was printed roughly two to three times per year. If I had to guess, I’d say my particular copy is from 1973 or 1974. No cool bookmark came with my copy, nor any strange inscriptions. But it’s still an awesome edition, although the pages are getting pretty brown and brittle. I bought this book a couple years ago from Amazon Marketplace for a few dollars. However, I should have had this copy a decade ago. You see, when I was younger I saw this exact copy at a garage sale in my home town. I should have just bought it — I mean, why not? — but I thought I already had the edition at home. I did get a pretty cool vintage copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses from the garage sale, so it wasn’t a complete bust. Anyhow, I got home, pawed through my Salinger collection, and saw no vintage copy of Nine Stories. Flash forward a number of years, I had to complete my collection.

And what about my 22 stories? Well, I’ve got pictures of that collection too. A few months back I took up the project of scanning the entire collection so I could distribute it to my friends. I made a PDF out of it but it turned out to be huge — over 200MB. The kind of size is necessary for the collection because I had to scan the pages at a high resolution else the text in certain parts would be unreadable. It’s a pretty nice piece of history, both Salinger’s and my own, so regardless of its availability online I will keep it in my library forever — just like all of these books.