USA TODAY International Edition
More J. D. Salinger books on the way, new bio says
‘ Catcher in the Rye’ writer approved works before his death in 2010
J. D. Salinger, who published his last story in 1965 and zealously guarded his privacy for decades, is suddenly back in the limelight, thanks to a new biography that says a trove of unknown Salinger works will be published.
Salinger ( Simon & Schuster, on sale Sept. 3), by David Shields and Shane Salerno, cites “two independent and separate” but unnamed sources who say the works will be released periodically, starting between 2015 and 2020. The book says Salinger approved them for publication.
They include stories about the Glass family and Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye fame; a novel based on Salinger’s relationship with his first wife, Sylvia Welter; and a novella that takes the form of a counterintelligence agent’s diary, culminating with the Holocaust.
Salinger died in 2010 at age 91. And although he stopped publishing decades before his death, he apparently continued to write, and rumors have swirled about works hidden in a secret vault.
Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, said Monday that he trusted the authors’ claim that new works will be published. “I believe the sourcing is solid because of the preponderance of onthe- record material that is airtight,” Karp says.
The book is a companion volume to a documentary to be released in theaters Sept. 6. Salerno conducted more than 100 interviews and directed the film.
Salerno said Monday that Salinger marked his manuscripts with colored tabs. A red dot meant the work was ready for publishing; a green dot indicated that it needed editing first.
“There’s no question that he was continuing to write; many people and friends have said that on the record,” Salerno says. “We just spent nine years doing detective work and due journalistic diligence. And when we got two sources who gave the exact account, we went with it.”
Salinger didn’t want the work published while he was alive “because he wasn’t writing for applause or ego. He was writing for himself,” Salerno says.
Isaac Gewirtz, curator of the Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library, said Monday that any publication of new Salinger works would be significant. “Certainly it’s very exciting when the work of a very good writer that has not yet been seen comes to light.”
It’s not clear who would publish the new Salinger works. Little, Brown, which publishes The Catcher
in the Rye, declined to comment, as did Harold Ober Associates, the agent of Salinger’s estate.
But should the unpublished Salinger works be made available to multiple publishers, “there certainly would be a spirited bidding war of feverish proportions,” Karp says.
At least one Salinger fan had decidedly mixed feelings about the news. David Gilbert, whose July novel & Sons features a reclusive novelist based partly on Salinger, said his “great fantasy” — that new Salinger works would someday be published — now fills him with dread.
“I don’t want Salinger to be dug up from the grave to be this big media sensation. Even in his death, I don’t want him to go through this round of publicity that he would obviously run away from.” And worst of all, Gilbert worries, the posthumous publications “might not be good.”