JD Salinger set to sue over ‘sequel’

One of the giants of American literature, the reclusive and litigious JD Salinger, is consulting lawyers about the upcoming publication of an unauthorised 'sequel' to his famous coming-of-age novel The Catcher in the Rye by a young Swedish-American writer who styles himself JD California.

California's book is called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye and appears to pick up the story of Salinger's protagonist Holden Caulfield. In Salinger's 1951 classic, Caulfield is 16 years old, wandering the streets of New York after being expelled from his private school. JD California features a 76-year-old man, 'Mr C', musing on having escaped his nursing home.

Salinger, now 90 and still living in New Hampshire, refuses - as always - to comment. But his New York literary agent Phyllis Westberg told the Sunday Telegraph: "The matter has been turned over to a lawyer."

Salinger is famous for bringing in the attorneys. In 1986 he tried to stop a biography by the British writer Ian Hamilton, featuring letters he had written to friends. The book was eventually published but with the letters paraphrased.

He has also resorted to the law to stop his own works being re-published. In 1974, in a rare interview, he told the /New York Times/ that there was "marvellous peace in not publishing".

The fact that JD California's book is published by an outfit called Windupbird Publishing suggests that it might all be a stunt of some kind. But "wind up" could have other connotations: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the title of a 1997 novel by the popular Japanese writer Haruki Murakami which features a Holden Caulfield-esque protagonist.