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**WALK & TALK** Janel Moloney, left, and Bradley Whitford on *The West Wing*. (Ankler illustration; Everett Collection)

Welcome to The Optionist. Thanks for reading along with me.

Let’s wish a happy birthday to one of the great white whales of literary IP: Catcher in the Rye, which turns 75 this week. Everyone from Jerry Lewis to Steven Spielberg to Billy Wilder to Elia Kazan chased the rights, hoping to bring it to the screen. John Cusack joked that his greatest regret on turning 21 was that he was too old to play Holden Caulfield, and it was a role a young Leonardo DiCaprio also coveted. It has still never been adapted for the screen. But never say never. In a long-ago letter, J.D. Salinger mused about being okay with a posthumous adaptation.

This is literally the anniversary of its publication. We’ve got a full round of tributes, including the reflections from six prominent writers in the Los Angeles Times, a think piece in The Atlantic that calls it “surprisingly hopeful,” the New York Times on how it has influenced American literature for us in Hollywood and a list of every time someone has been seen reading it in a movie. And if you’ve never seen Shane Salerno’s fab documentary on Salinger, there’s no time like the present!

A couple of picks from our first year just made their documentary debut — Jim Thorpe: Lit by Lightning and Whatever It Takes: Inside the eBay Scandal. The Thorpe doc is based on David Maraniss’ excellent bio, which I thought could be the basis for a scripted adaptation and I also ran down potential competing projects and alternative takes. The eBay doc isn’t based on the story I flagged, but it recounts the wild tale of how the company’s security team harassed a couple who wrote a newsletter about the auction site. If you’re not familiar with the story, check out the doc. It is too wild and crazy for me to explain here (the NYT has a good but long summary of the case). But trust me, it will be worth your time. It’s just bonkers.

Finally, I don’t know if you needed a PhD to figure out that adaptations increase book sales, but I guess it makes it sound more authoritative to come from someone who does. Statisticians at Princeton and the University of Manchester in England looked at the effect of Netflix’s adaptation of Heartstopper on book sales across 11 countries. Surprise! It boosted sales. But buried in the obvious was this interesting takeaway:

“The Netflix series did not simply amplify an existing audience,” said Dr. Francesco Rampazzo, lecturer in social statistics and demography at The University of Manchester. “It brought in new readers and changed how the books traveled, from a specialist graphic-novel readership into mainstream young-adult, retail and family purchase contexts.”

I’m not surprised by that conclusion. I bet you’d see the same thing with Heated Rivalry. It’s pretty much baked into an increase in sales, but it is nice to see it made explicit and quantified. It also underscores the push-and-pull relationship between books and adaptations that helps something niche become more mainstream.

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I genuinely loved the campaign-set romance that tops this week’s picks. But I also really liked the nuanced tale of race and redemption in the other pick. Finally, the period feminist thriller with Lessons in Chemistry vibes comes from an author I’ve featured before. Her stuff is great, but people have been sleeping on her. On to the picks!

IP Picks🔎: ‘The West Wing’ Gets a ‘When Harry Met Sally’ Spin

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