Betraying Salinger

An interesting article from a guy who completely blew the chance of a lifetime.

From The New Yorker...

The first letter I got from J.D. Salinger was very short. It was 1988, and I had written to him with a proposal: I wanted my tiny publishing house, Orchises Press, to publish his novella Hapworth 16, 1924. And Salinger himself had improbably replied, saying that he would consider it.

That May, I came home from vacation to find a letter from Phyllis Westberg, Harold Ober’s president. She began, “It might be wiser to sit down before reading the rest of this … ”

...Why had he said yes? I think he chose me because I didn’t chase him. I had left him alone for eight years after receiving his letter; I wasn’t pushy in the commercial way he found offensive.