"Who Could Have More Riches Than That?"

"Burnett was something of a hot ticket on the academic circuit. In 1931, he and his wife, Martha Foley, had founded Story magazine, which they still ran, and their acumen for spotting new talent had made their hundred-page monthly a must-read for the big New York publishers. In its first few years, Story had featured debut works by William Saroyan, Nelson Algren, Conrad Aiken, Kay Boyle, John Cheever, Wallace Stegner, and Carson McCullers—an eye-popping list that would soon include Norman Mailer, Jean Stafford, Richard Wright, Joseph Heller '50GSAS, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams.
"But little did Burnett know, in the spring of 1939, that the writer who would become Story's most fabled discovery was seated in the back row of room 505."

Paul Hond at Columbia Magazine tells the story of J. D. Salinger's first publisher.