Salinger Wins Fight to Block Biography

NEW YORK —  Author J. D. Salinger won his legal fight to block an unauthorized biography Thursday when a federal appeals court directed a lower court to issue a preliminary injunction barring publication of the book.

Salinger, author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” filed a civil suit last October in federal court here to block Random House from publishing “J. D. Salinger: A Writing Life.”

He contended that the book by author Ian Hamilton quoted or paraphrased, without permission, private letters he wrote over a 25-year period and later copyrighted.

The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed U.S. District Judge Pierre Leval, who had thrown out Salinger’s suit, and directed Leval “to issue a preliminary injunction barring publication of the biography in its present form.”