The Lawsuit in the Rye
By Richard Amada on Jun 16, 2009 | In Literary
It's been more than a half century since J.D. Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye, stormed onto the literary scene as an oft proclaimed American classic. But the 90-year-old author and recluse isn't yet ready to unclench his tightly held grasp on his intellectual property. A story in the New York Times reports that Salinger is taking a Swedish satirist to court over a new book that makes use of not only the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye (Holden Caulfield very thinly veiled as "Mr. C") but also Mr. Salinger as a character himself.
Parody is a protected fair use under U.S. copyright law. But apparently the new book is more like a farcical sequel than a comical retelling of the original story. That puts it in something of a legal gray area. It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.
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