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  • The Paris Review

    Franny and Zooey in Iran

    by Sasha von Oldershausen Apr 05, 2018 6 minutes

    I had a bad experience in Hollywood once. —J. D. Salinger

    To understand J. D. Salinger’s opinion of Hollywood, one needn’t look much further than his stories. Holden Caulfield launches into an invective against the industry on the second page of The Catcher in the Rye. Of his brother D. B., Holden says, “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D. B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me.”

    Salinger’s own profound aversion to the industry began when he sold the film rights to his short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” to the producer Samuel Goldwyn. The story, first published by The New Yorker in 1948, offers a scathing portrait of upper-middle-class American society. In Salinger’s opinion, Goldwyn missed the point entirely in the campy and hyperromanticized 1949 Hollywood feature My Foolish Heart.

    From that moment on, Salinger vowed to never have his work adapted to the screen again. He refused to sell

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