“
I was eating a sandwich at my desk when our receptionist called. “Mr. Salinger is here,” she said, “and he wants to meet you.” I said: “Mr. Salinger? What’s his first name?” And she said, “Jerome, his name is Jerome.” I said, “Send him in.”
In he came. He was very tall, dark-haired, had a horse face. He was melancholy looking. It’s the truth — the first person I thought of when I saw him was Hamlet.
—Robert Giroux on meeting Salinger and how he lost the chance to publish Catcher in the Rye
in case you thought it wasn’t actually checking to see if the world had ended, view source reveals: