JD Salinger Liked Burger King, Niagara Falls

Newly unveiled correspondence has revealed another side to late author JD Salinger, the Guardian reports. Salinger, widely considered a prickly recluse, is revealed over 50 letters to be surprisingly ordinary—the Catcher in the Rye scribe expresses his appreciation for tennis star Tim Henman and writes that he prefers Burger King's hamburgers to those of other burger chains.

The letters were sent to Donald Hartog, a late Englishman who met Salinger in 1938, and made public today on the first anniversary of Salinger's death. The author writes Hartog of the simple pleasures in gardening, but was not house-bound—he made group trips to Niagara Falls and indulged an interest in the theater. An archivist at East Anglia University describes to the Toronto Star the contents of a letter about a 1990 bus trip to the Falls: “He didn’t much like the souvenir shops and lights, but liked the Falls themselves and remarked on the immense amount of water. He enjoyed the companionship of his fellow travellers, found them interesting and nice.” (More JD Salinger stories.)