Confessions of a reclusive author

How bizarre. It turns out that "Tiger" Tim Henman's support didn't only consist of Daily Heil reading, middle-aged Middle Englanders. Tim Nice But Dim And Bad At Tennis may not have known it, but according to recently published letters J D Salinger also numbered among his fans. The famously reclusive novelist's privately expressed predilections were certainly questionable. Seriously, Burger King?!

As the Observer's William Skidelsky has suggested, it's initially something of a disappointment to discover that Salinger's years spent determinedly out of the spotlight weren't occupied with "dabbling in Scientology, taking LSD and/or working on some epic masterpiece to be discovered stashed in a vault long after his death". And for the Guardian's Kathryn Hughes, "what emerges from this little archive is the bathetic realisation that Great Writers are not really all that Great most of the time".

But, as Hughes does go on to acknowledge, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise - the lives of "Great Writers" are as humdrum as anyone else's in many respects, especially when, like Salinger, they studiously avoid the spotlight. It reminds me of Geoff Dyer's biography-of-sorts of D H Lawrence, Out Of Sheer Rage, in which he claims (perversely, perhaps) that what he finds most fascinating about Lawrence's plentiful correspondence is not the flowery writing, philosophical musings or irritated sniping but the prosaic, mundane detail about paying bills and doing DIY.