J.D. Salingers Unpublished Works Will Be Released to the Public Over the Next Decade | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

Despite the fact that J.D. Salinger looms large in the literary imagination, his published oeuvre is extremely limited, consisting of just four books and a scattering of short stories. The last of these works, a tale titled “Hapworth 16, 1924,” was printed in the New Yorker in June 1965, but as Salinger’s son tells the Guardian’s Lidija Haas, the story was far from the last piece penned by The Catcher in the Rye author.

In fact, the younger Salinger points out that his father continued to write throughout his life, producing a vast body of work during the nearly 50-year period between the release of the New Yorker’s story and his death in January. 2010. Now, Matt Salinger Reveals To Haas, he and the author’s widow, Colleen O’Neill, strive to release these unseen writings to the public once and for all, ideally sometime in the next decade.

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“[my dad] wanted me to organize it, and because of the scope of the work, he knew it would take a long time,” says matt salinger. “He was someone who had been writing for 50 years without publishing, so that’s a lot of material. … [but] there is no reluctance or protection: when it is ready, we will share it.”

Salinger’s son and widow began preparing the works for publication in 2011. According to The Guardian’s Alison Flood, specific details surrounding the plot and theme of the stories remain under wraps, though the glasses, a family of nine, are likely to explode. in much of salinger’s short fiction—he will make an appearance.

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hillel italie of the associated press writes that salinger’s published books include the catcher in the rye, a 1951 coming-of-age story that remains a staple of high school reading lists to this day. from today; story collection nine stories; a two-part novel called Raise the Roof Beam, Carpenter and Seymours: An Introduction; and, finally, franny and zooey, a text focused on the two youngest members of the glass family.

Salinger wrote most of his post-Catcher in the Rye oeuvre on a secluded 90-acre estate in Cornish, New Hampshire, according to biography.com. As Matt Salinger tells Haas, his father’s increasingly reclusive lifestyle reflected a strong desire to focus on writing: “He just decided that the best thing for his writing was not to have a lot of interactions with people, particularly with literary types,” Salinger says. . “He didn’t want to play in those poker games, he wanted to because he would encourage all aspiring writers to do, you know, stew in their own juices.”

Interestingly, in the AP Italy Notes, Salinger not only stopped publishing his work after 1965, but also refused reissues or e-book editions of his existing writings. And when unauthorized editions of his early work appeared on the market without his permission in 1974, the author told the New York Times’ Lacey Fosburgh, “Some stories, owned by me, have been stolen. someone took them.”

continued, “it is an illegal act. It is unfair. Suppose you have a coat you like and someone breaks into your closet and steals it. that’s how I feel.”

Salinger’s son has continued his father’s attempts to control the flow of published writing, blocking the republication of several stories that the author reportedly considered simply “juvenile exercises,” not ready-to-read material. This assignment, Matt Salinger explains to Haas, “isn’t fun,” but instead stems from “love and care for [Salinger’s] work and his books.”

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more recently, italie writes for ap, a 2013 documentary and book suggested that five of the author’s posthumous works, including one based on salinger’s brief marriage to a nazi collaborator and a second on holden caulfield, star of The Catcher in the Rye — would be published in 2020. Matt Salinger, for his part, refuted these rumors, telling Haas that they “bear little to no relation to reality.”

Overall, the younger Salinger believes the posthumous materials to be published will be “tremendously well received” by dedicated readers. some will “definitely” be disappointed, he adds, but they likely represent “people [Salinger] wouldn’t care about.”

This latest news comes in the year of the centenary of Salinger’s birth. As Italy points out, new covers and a boxed edition of the author’s old fiction were released last year. And come October of this year, PJ Grisar reports for Forward, the New York Public Library will host an exhibit on Salinger with manuscripts, photographs, personal belongings, and letters provided by his and O’Neill’s son.

“When my father said that everything he has to say is in his fiction, believe it, it is there. I think that when more of his writing is made accessible, he covers everything that would interest the discerning reader,” Matt Salinger concludes to Haas. “My job is to help make that happen as soon as possible and not get in the way.”

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