Holden Caulfield, a Ripe 76

June 17, 2009
Holden Caulfield, a Ripe 76, Heads to Court Again
By A. G. SULZBERGER

The author J. D. Salinger, known as much for his cloistered ways as for his skillful pen, has sued repeatedly over the years to protect his privacy and the sanctity of his work.

So when a book that describes itself on its copyright page as “An Unauthorized Fictional Examination of the Relationship Between J. D. Salinger and his Most Famous Character” was published in Britain and scheduled for release in the Untied States, a detour to court was a safe bet.

“60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” by J. D. California, a 33-year-old humor writer from Sweden who uses that gimmicky nom de plume, might be read as an update of sorts to Mr. Salinger’s 1951 classic, “The Catcher in the Rye,” which has sold more than 35 million copies. The new work centers on a 76-year-old “Mr. C,” the creation of a writer named Mr. Salinger. Although the name Holden Caulfield does not appear in the book, Mr. C is clearly Holden, one of the most enduring adolescent figures in American literature, as an old man.

Both novels are set in New York, feature the same characters and use similar language. Mr. Salinger’s work opens with the 16-year-old Holden’s departure from a boarding school; the new book begins with “Mr. C” leaving a retirement home. Both end on a carousel in Central Park.

In a complaint of copyright infringement filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, where a hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, lawyers for Mr. Salinger call the new novel “a rip-off pure and simple.” Lawyers for Fredrik Colting, the new author, filed a brief this week saying that the work is more complex than just a sequel, noting that Mr. Salinger himself is a character.

The new book, the brief said, “explores the famously reclusive Salinger’s efforts to control both his own persona and the persona of the character he created.”

It adds: “In order to regain control over his own life, which is drawing to a close, ‘Mr. Salinger’ tries repeatedly to kill off Mr. C by various means: a runaway truck; falling construction debris; a lunatic woman with a knife; suicide by drowning and suicide by pills.”

The case is one of several in recent years exploring how much license the public has to draw on a classic work. In 2001 the estate of Margaret Mitchell, author of “Gone With the Wind,” sued unsuccessfully to prevent the release of “The Wind Done Gone,” which told the same story from the perspective of a slave. Last year J. K. Rowling, the author of the best-selling Harry Potter books, won a lawsuit over a guidebook to the series called The Harry Potter Lexicon.

“This case is really interesting because it really is where copyright runs into First Amendment rights, and it shows the jagged line between them,” said Jennifer Jenkins, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School, who also was part of the legal team that defended the publisher in “The Wind Done Gone” lawsuit.

In examining questions of fair use of copyrighted work, courts have looked at whether a new work transforms the original in a significant way, Ms. Jenkins said, citing a Supreme Court ruling that a legitimate work must add “something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first with new expression, meaning or message.”

Mr. Colting, who is also the writer and publisher of lowbrow humor books for Nicotext, a Swedish company he started with a friend six years ago, said in a telephone interview that he never imagined that his book, which he described as his first attempt at serious fiction, might end up in court.

“In Sweden we don’t sue people,” he said.

Marcia Paul, a lawyer for Mr. Salinger, declined to comment on the case, citing her client’s desire for privacy. Court documents filed in the case describe Mr. Salinger, now 90, who lives in Cornish, N.H., as totally deaf, with “several age-related health problems,” including a recently broken hip that has put him in a rehabilitation facility. Mr. Salinger has not been photographed or granted an interview for decades.

Mr. Salinger will not attend the hearing, Ms. Paul said. Though he has not published any new work since 1965, he has sued several times to protect certain works, including successful efforts to stop publication of some of his personal letters in a biography and to halt a staging of “The Catcher in the Rye” by a college theater company in San Francisco. He has also turned down requests, from Steven Spielberg, among others, for movie adaptations of “The Catcher in the Rye.”

“He feels strongly that he wants his fiction and his characters to remain intact as he wrote them,” according to an affidavit by his literary agent.