I love musical theater and opera, genres that could barely live without adaptations. Take away adaptations and we don’t have West Side Story or My Fair Lady. Heck, we couldn’t even have Romeo and Juliet or G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion. Most of Shakespeare’s work adapted others’ stories, and Pygmalion was inspired by a Greek myth.

I think Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov once said that if people didn’t like his orchestra treatment of other’s music, they could always go back to the original. I say the same thing for Salinger. For a pre-1978 work, holding onto a copyright beyond 56 years is too selfish. Art is communicative. Let other people share in your work. Or else, take Robert Burns’ poem out of your title and out of your novel!

my stance: Basically what this man is doing is trying to publish fanfic. He’s welcome to write it, but shouldn’t try to publish it and nobody should be surprised that JDS is trying to block it. Holden is his. So much goes into a character, so much that isn’t in a final novel, it’s ridiculous to presume that anyone can echo an original author’s creation–especially without his/her permission and input.

Enjoy!

The Catcher in the Rye is by far my favorite book, and have always wondered ‘what happened’.

I’m probably speaking more out of selfishness than true fairness in the matter. Salinger has his right not to allow this book. Boy, I wish he would.

I think Salinger has every right to ban this book from being published. If I invested my time in one character, I wouldn’t want someone ripping it off and trying to add to it.

I would LOVE to read a sequel about Holden Caulfield, but I’d want it to be written by Salinger himself.

Personally, I think if this new novel is even remotely well done, it will be another demonstration of draconian copyright laws – especially since money is involved.

Let’s be honest. What’s wrong with this novel idea? People write biographies and historical fiction all of the time – and they sometimes even, gasp, disregard accepted theories of time and space.

Ideas and perspectives evolve (well, theoretically… in some people). Salinger created a representation of a specific idea, of a specific perspective, during a specific time. If this new novel SPECIFICALLY infringes on this, then yeah, bring that bad boy to court. I doubt it will. Cut and paste intellect is too old school.

I don’t have a problem with someone trying to protect a legacy, though if I had one to protect myself, I don’t think I’d bother with the time or money to protect it very well. But, Salinger doesn’t allow anything, good or bad, and that’s not the philosophy I want to adopt myself.

I agree with you, though, and I’m not often interested in reading stories where people have taken characters and reused them. But,I do love watching film adaptations.

That being said, I think in some cases there have been great examples of sequels and spin-offs. I think of all the Star Wars books that have been published, by a variety of different authors. Lucas keeps tight reign over what is allowed to be published, to ensure that everything stays within the “Star Wars universe,” but the result of this has been protecting and promoting high quality/holding to basic ideas and principles among the published Star Wars literature.

Or I think of the author of Bridget Jones, who managed to do a great job of adapting the Pride & Prejudice story. That’s an example of a brilliant exception to the rule. But there are so few exceptions, and I feel that authors have the right to protect the quality of the legacy they leave. Really though, I just wish authors would stop trying to rewrite, improve upon or extend, someone else’s stories and start coming up with their own.