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He liked the idea of sweet, clean, oracular young girls (like his creations Pheobe and Esmé), but in life they were never pure or wise enough for him. Joyce Maynard’s book about her affair with him—she was 18, he was 53—pulls off the unlikely trick of telling a Salinger story from the point of view of the pure thing that the Salinger hero desires. Pure things, though, should not write books, have their own desires, or sell off love letters that make august figures like Salinger seem lecherous and cruel. When Maynard auctioned off Salinger’s letters to her, the actor Peter Horton bought them, saying he’d return them to Salinger. Men are very, very protective of Salinger.
— Mountain Man, by Virginia Heffernan, in Tablet. (via marcthesharc)
