Salinger and Christian Science

In this week's Spectator, Christopher Hitchens tells the following fascinating story about J. D. Salinger:

My friend Roger Lathbury, a literary publisher working across the river in Virginia, wrote to J.D. Salinger in 1988 asking if he could reprint his last published story, ‘Hapworth 16, 1924’, in book form. Eight years later Salinger wrote back to agree. He even proposed coming down to Washington, where the two had a meager snack at the National Gallery of Art. Over lunch he asked Roger if he, too, was fond of the Christian Science classics of Mary Baker Eddy. Two things arise from this trashy recommendation. It undermines the frequent comparison of Salinger to Twain, who wrote a hilarious demolition of Mrs Eddy. And it rather suggests that we won’t find much of value in any undiscovered manuscript.

It's interesting how so many critics and commentators have such a difficult time dealing with Salnger's interest in religion and mysticism. Like Hitchens, they use it as a means to belittle him, to imply that he couldn't have been all that great because of his crazy interest in matters metaphysical. Like those other literary lightweights Yeats and Blake, Dante and Milton, Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Apparently Salinger's interest in Christian Science was longstanding, with his daughter accusing him of neglect because his beliefs meant he never took her to a doctor when she was ill. The fact that he was born Jewish leads me to compare him interestingly to that other great Jewish Christian Scientist Joel Goldsmith.