A. SCOTT BERG: I never met Salinger, but I came close. In the early 1970s, when I was researching my book on Max Perkins [the legendary editor of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe], I spent a lot of time with all the Perkins relatives. Some of them lived up in the ancestral home of the Everetts and the Perkinses, which is in Windsor, Vermont. Right across the longest covered bridge in the United States, which crosses the Connecticut River, is Cornish, New Hampshire.
I went up to visit Max Perkins’s sister, a woman named Fanny Cox—Mrs. Archibald Cox Sr., the mother of the Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox. She invited me to dinner. As we were sitting at dinner, I said, “Gosh, you know, as I was driving up, it occurred to me that across the covered bridge is Cornish, New Hampshire. J. D. Salinger lives over there. Have you ever seen him?” She said, “Well, why do you want to know?” I said, “I was just curious.” She said, “As a matter of fact, he sat in that chair you’re sitting in just last night. I served him dinner, just the way I’m serving you dinner.” I said, “You’re—you’re kidding.” She said, “No. He comes over here regularly because he comes over to pick up his mail and do some shopping on this side of the river.”
Fanny Cox was then in her eighties. She looked like this great American pioneer woman, something between Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath and Beulah Bondi [a character actress who specialized in maternal roles; she played Mrs. Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life]. She was the United States of America. We chatted about Max Perkins and this and that. Then I said, “Listen, J. D. Salinger was here? He was here just last night?” She said, “Oh, are you a great fan of J. D. Salinger?” I said, “Actually, I’m not really, but he’s J. D. Salinger. Shouldn’t I want to go to Cornish to see him?” She said, “Well, do you have anything to say to him?” I said, “Not really.” She said, “If I had J. D. Salinger to dinner, what would you want to know?” I said, “I’d want to know if he’s still writing.” She said, “Yes, he’s still writing.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “Is there anything else you’d want to know?” I said, “No, just that he’s okay.” She said, “He’s fine. So there is no reason for you ever to see him, is there?” Dinner was over. That was that. It’s the closest I got to J. D. Salinger.