Mr. Salinger seems to be an author who writes for pleasure and for himself not for money. Mr. Salinger just does not want to be famous! Like there are people that want to shine in the light and be known, Mr. Salinger was the kind that did not want to be in the light and known. Mr. Salinger does not give any interviews except for few student interviews. Here is one of the interviews I have found in 1974.
November 3, 1974
J. D. Salinger Speaks About His Silence
By LACEY FOSBURGH
an Francisco, Nov. 2--Goaded by publication of unauthorized editions of his early, previously uncollected works, the reclusive author J. D. Salinger broke a public silence of more than 20 years last week, issuing a denunciation and revealing he is hard at work on writings that may never be published in his lifetime. Speaking by telephone from Cornish, N. H., where he makes him home, the 55-year-old author whose most recent published work, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour, an Introduction," appeared in 1962, said:
"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."
For nearly half an hour after saying he intended to talk "only for a minute," the author, who achieved literary fame and cultish devotion enhanced by his inaccessibility following publication of "The Catcher in the Rye" in 1951, spoke of his work, his obsession with privacy and his uncertain thoughts about publication.
The interview with Mr. Salinger, who was at times warm and charming, at times wary and skittish, is believed to be his first since 1953, when he granted one to a 16-year-old representative of the high school newspaper in Cornish.
What prompted Mr. Salinger to speak now on what he said was a cold, rainy, windswept night in Cornish was what he regards as the latest and most severe of all invasions of his private world: the publication of "The Complete Uncollected Short Stories of J. D. Salinger, Vols. 1 and 2."
During the last two months, about 25,000 copies of these books, priced at $3 to $5 for each volume, have been sold--first here in San Francisco, then in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, according to Mr. Salinger, his lawyers and book dealers around the country.
"Some stories, my property, have been stolen," Mr. Salinger said. "Someone's appropriated them. It's an illicit act. It's unfair. Suppose you had a coat you liked and somebody went into your closet and stole it.
That's how I feel."
'Selling Like Hotcakes'
"They're selling like hotcakes," said one San Francisco book dealer. "Everybody wants one."
While "The Catcher in the Rye" still sells at the rate of 250,000 copies a year, the contents of the unauthorized paperback books have been available heretofore only in the magazine files of large libraries.
"I wrote them a long time ago," Mr. Salinger said of the stories, "and I never had any intention of publishing them. I wanted them to die a perfectly natural death.
"I'm not trying to hide the gaucheries of my youth. I just don't think they're worthy of publishing."
I also got a criticism of “The Catcher In The Rye”..
“Precisely how old I was when I first read "The Catcher in the Rye," I cannot recall. When it was published, in 1951, I was 12 years old, and thus may have been a trifle young for it. Within the next two or three years, though, I was on a forced march through a couple of schools similar to Pencey Prep, from which J.D. Salinger's 16-year-old protagonist Holden Caulfield is dismissed as the novel begins, and I was an unhappy camper; what I had heard about "The Catcher in the Rye" surely convinced me that Caulfield was a kindred spirit.”
The Catcher in The Rye was also banned at one point because It was originally banned due to obsence language, sexuality, and because it wasn't "appropriate" for youth.
