Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose j. D. Salingers one of the most successful authors of all time. His 1951 novel catcher in the rye. It is a classic sold over 250,000 eafer a million copies and continues to sell over 250,000 each year. He turned his back on fame and chose instead the life. Salerno shows his life. Heres a trailer for salinger. In 1979 i got an assignment for Newsweek Magazine to photograph this author. He doesnt like to be photograph but we do know he picks up his mail in windsor vermont. So i waited and this jeep pulls up and he goes into the post office really quickly and when he came out, i got it, i got salinger. The publication of catcher in the rye in 1951 was a revolution. There had not been a voice like that. When youre a kid and you read catcher in the rye its like oh my god someone gets it. How many minions came to that book. The great mystery is why he stopped. Salinger was a national story, shooting star. At the height of that success, he disappears. He came the Howard Hughes of his day. Mystery, we all like mystery. Second world war created j. D. Salinger. There was a lot of mystery what he did in the army. Few people have seen so much death. Salinger had a break down. Adequate readership. If one person used something i had written as a justification for killing somebody, id say god, people are crazy. Literally living inside of j. D. Salingers catcher in the rye. But if three people used something i had written as justification, i would be very very troubled by it. He wanted nothing to come between him and his characters. They were real to him. He knew them like god. You cannot dismiss the issues of his private life. People hurt him, people he trusted him. You have ruined my life. I saw two manuscripts. Whats in that book. Someone crack that colored man it will be the story of the century. Writing a book is a horrible exhausting struggle. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon. And he had demons. Rose Shane Salerno also cowrote the new biography, salinger, he cowrote it with David Shields and im pleased to have him here at this table. So. Theres so much to talk about. Let me just talk about you first. Why salinger . For you. There were several reasons. First, in my house when i was a kid, salinger was a big deal. My mother really loved salinger and made sure that i knew about salinger and that i read salinger. There were two aspects of this. The first was the work, and it was how much she loved the work and how much i became a true true admirer of his work. But the second was the man. My mother was fascinated by salinger the man, who turned his back on celebrity before celebrity was celebrity. And she would talk about this kind of iconic figure who lived in the woods of New Hampshire and he didnt want to be disturbed. So there was this mythology around the work that i was incredibly interested in as a child. But i didnt know, like a lot of people who loved salingers work, they dont know much about his life. And so i began, when i started this around 2003, 2004 rose when you started this, you started what. Originally i was thinking of doing it as a feature film and i was very interested in having Daniel Day Lewis play j. D. Salinger and i had friends make films with him and they told me that he was very serious about research and that he needed a wealth of information before he would ever consider anything. So for an unplanned, for a hoped meeting that i would have with him, i started doing a lot of research. And that research led me to Start Talking with people that had never spoken before on the record. And it became very clear to me rose did you film these interviews. I didnt initially. It was over the phone and some in person. But it became very clear to me that those stories had to be told. Rose and it became clear that was a documentary not a feature film. Yes. It became clear to me that most of these people were in their late 80s, early 90, 93, 94, 95 and that they were passing away very quickly and if their stories werent recorded now, they would be lost forever. And i began a quest, and thats really what it was. At that time i went in naively i thought it was a six months project that was going to cost 300,000. It ended up being a ten year project that cost 2 million of my own money. Rose of your own money. Of my own money. I was 30 when i started, i was 40 when i finished. It was a decade long detective story. Rose this is family money. No, no family money, this is money i had made as a screen writer working and was basically financing a labor of love and a passion with my day job. Rose you financed 100 this film. 100 . Rose that puts you in pretty good position now in terms of. We were very fortunate in that we were able to attract three partners. The Weinstein Company is the feature film component and distributor. American masters is the american component and Simon Schuster is the book component. Rose how did you bring David Shields into this. I brought David Shields into this because he was someone i interviewed very early in the process. I really loved his work and he knew salinger very well. There was no way for me to shoot the film, have my day job and work on the 700page book entirely by myself. So we collaborated on the book and literally wrote it together. I mean you know often in the same room for months and months at a time. And you know, he was great, he really made a huge contribution to this. Rose do you think you understand j. D. Salinger . I think i have a very good understanding of j. D. Salinger. I think that i understand that how pivotal world war ii was. It was the fulcrum of his life. It was the transformative trauma. If j. D. Salinger had not gone to world war ii, we wouldnt be having this conversation. Rose he would not have been a great writer. No, theres no way. And the proof, white way he would say that. All of the work that was written prior to world war ii he dismissed, he actually gold them the ghosteries of his youth. He went in, a short story writer and came out with a devastated and shell shocked tone that was exclusively salingers tone. And after that, you get as may, bananafish, catcher, the mine stories, raise high, the glass room. The world war ii is really the ghost in the machine of all of salingers work. And though he often said he wasnt an auto biographical writer, he was a deeply auto biographical writer and all of those stories share the characteristics of his own life. Rose is the discovery of this film in part there are these books that are going to be released. Its part of the discovery but there are many discoveries. I think very few people know that j. D. Salinger was in a Mental Institution because he was so traumatized by world war ii. I think very few people know that j. D. Salinger lost the love of his life to charlie chaplain, oona oneill who herself was an extra woman. A woman who between 16 and 18 dated peter arno, orson weld, j. D. Salinger and then married charlie chaplain. He was 54 and she was 18 and interestingly salingers life was completely marked by that. Oona imprinted salinger so much so that all of his, and i think its the right word his fascination maybe even his obsession with young women was squarely rooted in losing oona to chaplain. So much so that by the time he gets to Joyce Maynard she is 54 and he was 18. He was in the charlie chaplain role. Rose women are central to this film and i want to talk about that. Put it aside for a second. Before he went to war, who was he. He was a kid who grew up at 1133 park avenue. He was a privileged son. He was someone who didnt need to go to world war ii. He was initially rejected and he fought very hard to be able to go and fight. He had a romantic view of war. He thought he needed it to become a better writer. He thought it was going to be like a jack london story about adventure. He had no idea that what leah head was d day, the battle of the bulge. He had no idea he was going to walk into rose know and experience things that would change him. Forever. It was really the transformative trauma of his life. We argue very passionately in the book and film that j. D. Salinger walked into a concentration camp and never walked out. He himself said you never get the smell of burning flesh ought of your nostrils no matter how long he lives. And that was something he told multiple people over his life sometime. Rose he was there for like 280 days. He was not on the front lines as an infantry man but he had a privilege and i would argue kind of a horrible view of the entire war because he could see the bodies and the casualties on a daytoday basis. And he knew, he knew how worthless battles like the battle of herkan force were and they didnt need to be fought. He saw the cumulative horror it. And you find it in the catcher in the rye who we say in the book its a disguised war novel. He says i will write it down myself which of course danny cooper kind of borrowed very much for dr. Strange love. Its bizarre. He got what he asked for in that he wanted the experience of war to make him. He kept saying in early interviews he was trying to get rid of the neck ties that he had. His privileged park avenue lifestyle. He was aware that he didnt have that great wound. Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us as readers, he was able, he had that wound which was world war ii. You know, world war ii broke j. D. Salinger as a man but it made him as an artist. Rose how did it break him . It broke him because rose because of what he saw. Yes. And because of, i mean again, it was not just all the battles but it was the concentration camp at the end. It was a particularly horrible concentration camp, it was a subcamp of dakau when the american soldiers were approaching the camp, the german soldiers locked the jewish prisoners in a bunker and set them on fire. Thats the root of the quote that salinger says and that you hear in the film and in the book. It was so devastating to him that he checked himself into a Mental Institution after the war. He then did something thats truly extraordinary. When he left the Mental Institution, instead of going home like most people would, he signed up for more and became part of the denaziification of germany. Rose why did he do that. He wanted to seat people pay. And then straight out of a salinger story he falls for a gestapo agent and is deeply deeply in love with this woman, marries her against the law at the time, there was a fraternization and he brings them to his parents home. He found out from lela hadley and sj perleman he found out they had these gestapo ties. Rose he didnt find out he wasnt jewish. He was deeply conflicted about religion his entire life. Rose he wrote throughout the war. Whats astonishing about salinger he not only wrote during the war but he published during the war. The liberation of paris, he was running up saying read this. I mean, he was, you no, incredibly ambitious. All the things that he ran away from after the publication of the catcher in the rye he completely embraced. He was an extraordinarily ambitious guy. This was a man who the new yorker rejected story after story after story. Instead of taking the rejections and moving on he would write them back letters and tell them heres what wrong with your stories. Rose later became his great great great friend, the editor. Yes. Whats awe maiding his editor before sean actually wrote a letter we have in the book basically saying we dont think this j. D. Salinger is right for us. Of course he becomes their signature writer. Rose you inserted my interview. We did. He says j. D. Salingers idea of perfection is really perfection and that comes from a very funny story which is that they were doing this story of salingers and they got down to the final proof and they changed a comma in the story. And when they changed a comma, the quote from the editor was that salinger was very melancholy about that comma. So he was very furious. He would not have been a great filmmaker. Rose but they rejected him because what . They didnt think he was good. Well, they were not on the level of the stories that he wrote after world war ii. Rose secondly hemmingway read him in paris and was impressed. That someone could be writing and publishing in the Fourth Division which hemmingway was assigned to during the war. Hemingway and him struck up an incredible relationship. When salinger went to a Mental Institution after the war the first person he writes is hemingway and theres a famous letter we have in the book dear papa. Basically saying hes in the hospital going through a very tough time. Hes looking for a nurse that can save him, a Kathryn Barkley i think he said. Had he and hemingway really did have a deeply moving conversation. We have a letter in the book where salinger references to his close friend Paul Fitzgerald when hemingway died, it deeply moves salinger. And hemingway was a true inspiration for him the way hemingway wrote about, the iceberg theory of writing. Salinger went to school on that. He went to school on hemingway. Between that and the al chemy that happened with war, thats the j. D. Salinger we know today. Rose when was that. Tell me that. When do we know the j. D. Salinger we know today. The bananafish. 47 or 8. Rose he is then great. Yes. The new yorker was so blown away by the story which again they initially rejected which is interesting. He changed it and then they accepted it. But he would then add two other stories published that year and was given a first option contract and thats when he became a new yorker writer, thats when he became j. D. Salinger to the world. Whats interesting is there were still stories they passed on after that and of course quite famously the new yorker rejected the catcher in the rye, which is a story we tell in the film which is sort of an unbelievable story that they not only rejected it but they didnt believe it. Rose but new york is a city that celebrates authors, celebrates talent, celebrates creativity. He had all of that. All of that. Rose and he was celebrated. Completely. Rose why did he say this is not for me. Whats interesting is how aggressively he pursued his fame, how aggressively he pursued notoriety. You read these early letters. Hes actually really excited that Samuel Goldwyn has optioned his story. Hes really excited theyre talking about him in hollywood or unquell wiggly or bananafish is telling very well. Whatever his expectations of fame were, when it happened, he couldnt get away from it fast enough. Whatever he imagined it was going to be, what it turned out to be in reality was something that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. Rose so what happened . What about what it turned out to be. I dont know. We tell a very unknown story but i think a signature, critical story in his life where he goes to a dinner party and hes the toast of new york. And everyone is talking salingers here, hes really here, salingers here. And he excuses himself to go make a phone call. Gets up and walks out and never comes back. Rose i have a theory about that. It is people like salinger today. The thing they love the most is who created the work. Yes. Rose and some of them, thats what brings them the great joy. It is not the celebration. And for a smaller percentage of them, the celebration gets in the way of the work. Just gets in the way of it. And so they want to reject that. So they took salinger to the extreme. They go where they feel they can really create because thats where the joy is. Thats where their being is. To be on the cover of Time Magazine in 1961 with something that only wednesday to states men and nobel laureate. He wrote another book. I mean after all they rewarded you with fame and money. We said youre one of the important writers of the century, now come on, lets have some more. And then he doesnt get it. In American Literature like salinger, the greatest novel ever. Heights and big success. The biggest height he disappears. Dont talk about that, dont think that. You dont have to know a kid to pick up what the elephants are in the room that the familys not talking about. He sort of became the Howard Hughes of his day. People have a very specific response to salingers work that is wholly unique to salinger. People read salinger andtheyre protective of salinger. They read salinger and they love this very clean story. Its a myth its not a real story but they love this story that j. D. Salinger published this book, was given overwhelming fame and couldnt handle it, didnt want it and disappeared. The truth is he published for 14 years after the catcher in the rye from 51 to 65. The truth is he was not a recluse, there was nothing reclusive at all. Rose he would come back to new york. He would come back to new york, traveled a world. Obviously a recluse wouldnt pursue actresses the waive he did or pursue maynard the waive we he did. He would go to the Church Picnics and church dinners every sunday night. There was nothing reclusive about j. D. Salinger. But he was deeply private and thats very different. And there were reasons for him to be private. There were aspects of his life that he wanted to keep private. Rose catcher in the rye was published. Critics said what . Well they were mixed. Initially there was reviews that were not positive and then immediately there was overwhelming praise. So like the New York Times actually had two different reviews. One sort of saying, you know, its not a great book and then one saying its a revelation. So there was a mixed response to it initially. But then even the new yorker actually ended up publishing quite hilariously a love letter review to him after initially rejecting the story. Rose for you whats the best thing he ever wrote. Probably as may or bananafish. Rose which came before. The catcher in the rye will always be there. Its probably the greatest antiestablishment book of all time. Its more relevant in some ways than 2013 than it was in 1951 when it was published. But the work that has been more Lasting Impact or the nine stories and raise high. Rose but as your film points out and john guer says three murders were committed by people who referenced catcher in the rye. Not one, not two but three. Yes. And theres actually more. Those are the three that