DETROIT — Art may be open to interpretation, but when the work in question is a reflection of an artist’s life, historians and museums tend to present their interpretations as fact.
Biography
Posted inBooks
Invisible Man: The Biographies of J. D. Salinger
In July 1985, the British poet, editor and critic Ian Hamilton submitted the manuscript for J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life to his editors at Random House. Three years later, in May 1988, after countless depositions, preliminary injunctions, affidavits and court appeals, Hamilton’s truncated In Search of J. D. Salinger was published. This was the “legal” version of his original biography, rewritten and wiped of all quotations from Salinger’s letters that Hamilton had included, and starring now the biographer himself as the main character on a thwarted quest to write the life of America’s most famous recluse.