Books: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted IN SEARCH OF J.D. SALINGER

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Salinger sued. The lower court found that Hamilton had made "fair use" of the letters. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversed the ruling in a decision that not only reinforced existing copyright law but also limited the manner in which a writer could describe copyrighted material in his own words. Hamilton went reeling back to his writing table, and the publishing business went into a tizzy. "Biography is a legitimate literary pursuit," says Jason Epstein, Hamilton's editor at Random House. "Salinger's reluctance to be written about, if ceded, could threaten the whole genre."

Noting that 40% of the disputed manuscript's pages contained quoted and paraphrased materials, Copyright Lawyer Roger Zissu sees a more limited peril. "Most historians and biographers don't write books that are that dependent on the subject's correspondence," says Zissu, who was not involved in the case but who successfully represented Gerald Ford's publishers when they sued the Nation magazine for printing key excerpts from the former President's unpublished memoirs.

By paraphrasing Salinger's words, Hamilton believed he was within legal bounds. But the court signaled otherwise: "The biographer has no inherent right to copy the 'accuracy' or the 'vividness' of the letter writer's expression." For example, in 1941 Salinger dated Oona O'Neill, daughter of Playwright Eugene O'Neill and future wife of Charlie Chaplin. In one unpublished letter, Salinger imagined a scene from the couple's domestic life: "I can see them at home evenings. Chaplin squatting grey and nude, atop his chiffonier, swinging his thyroid around his head by his bamboo cane, like a dead rat. Oona in an aquamarine gown, applauding madly from the bathroom." The banned Hamilton version: "At one point in a letter to Burnett ((Salinger)) provides a pen portrait of the Happy Hour Chez Chaplin: the comedian, ancient and unclothed, is brandishing his walking stick -- attached to the stick, and horribly resembling a lifeless rodent, is one of Chaplin's vital organs. Oona claps her hands in appreciation . . ."

Citing an "enormous chilling effect" from the decision, Random House Lawyer Gerald Hollingsworth indicates that Scott Donaldson's forthcoming biography of John Cheever has been shorn of some of Cheever's illustrative and idiosyncratic phrases. Last year Macmillan shelved The Binghams of Louisville after a copyright challenge from Family Patriarch Barry Bingham Sr., former head of the Louisville Courier-Journal media empire.

Despite all the fuss, Hamilton's book emerges as a canny and engaging variation on that old journalistic ploy: how to write a lively story about not getting the story. In Search of J.D. Salinger is basically a tour de force, impressively written but a bit precious. The author invents an alter ego , character who prods the legally lamed Ian Hamilton to get on with his project despite the court's restrictions on paraphrasing. He also takes the liberty of imagining what Salinger might say to him: "It is you I hate. You are a snooper and a thief."