On January 28, 2010, J.D. Salinger died at the age of 91. His obituary in the New York Times is here. The New York Times is also providing an interactive map that traces Holden Caulfield's footsteps around Manhattan. There is also an article related to the map.
Many have been recalling their experiences with The Catcher in the Rye. I know I will never forget my first, which will forever be cloaked with the mystique of the impermissible and the taboo. I still remember when my grammar school teacher reprimanded me for reading Catcher. I attended a Catholic grammar school, and my teacher thought the book had too many curse words. Despite my teacher's scolding, I read the novel with great delight. As one writer observes, "while 'The Catcher in the Rye' is not a book that grows with us, no book gives as much pleasure if you read it at the right age." Adam Kirsch Salinger's Long Goodbye: How do you mourn a writer who departed years ago?, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 30, 2010.
Everyone who reads Catcher "at the right age" can relate how Salinger's fiction impacts their reality. Since Salinger's death, however, estate planning practitioners have been pondering the interaction of Salinger's fiction with different realities -- those of the federal estate tax and probate.
In Salinger and the Estate Tax, NY Times, Jan. 29, 2010, Floyd Norris quotes from Richard A. Behrendt, a lawyer and estate planner at Robert W. Baird & Company. Here is an excerpt of Behrendt's observations:
As you know, J.D. Salinger has died, and every newspaper in the country is running multiple stories about his life and legacy.
One angle that has probably not been covered is the potential estate tax implications of his death, and in particular, his death in early 2010 when there is no federal estate tax under current law. . . . Just think of the irony of the obsessively private J.D. Salinger becoming the subject of a constitutional battle over the federal tax code!
Another unique issue in this case is valuation. Some reports have hinted that Salinger had anywhere from 2 to 15 unpublished novels in his safe. . . . [H]ow much is an unpublished Salinger novel worth for federal estate tax purposes? Who knows? How about 15 of them?
Similarly, in a post on Death and Taxes Blog, Joel A. Schoenmeyer explores Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, and Probate. Schoenmeyer, a Chicago-area probate attorney, highlights the following part from a 1957 letter by J.D. Salinger:
I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights [to The Catcher in the Rye] to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won't have to see the results of the transaction.
Just this 1957 letter is currently being sold for $54,000.
