The Mysteries of J.D. Salinger

although this seems like a longer shot than the unpublished manuscripts, i really hope someday we see a book of JDS's collected letters. the ones we've seen have been so fascinating, and i suspect they're the closest anyone will ever get to understanding what the man was actually like. which of course is exactly what he didn't want.

The more I read about his personal life, the less respect I have for him, but that goes for any public figure I guess. Joyce Maynard's memoir was devastating, and she didn't seem like any great prize herself. His daughter Margaret's account was also very sad.

who will be the 21st century max brod?

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

yeah i've tried to ignore most of that stuff, his daughter's book, the maynard memoir etc. i did read the recent bio, which was good -- not a candy coated portrayal, but not a hatchet job either.
what's interesting to me about the alleged volumes of unpublished stuff is that salinger, out of all authors, seemed to really write to his reader -- the Buddy Glass stuff is so aware of the audience. so what does an author like that sound like when he's writing for no one but himself?

I wanted to read the recent bio, but it seemed bogged down in WWII battles . . . maybe I will try it again. I think I read (or heard somewhere, I can't remember) that the Paul Alexander bio is better (though I haven't read that one either).

A teacher of mine once said Salinger's literary voice was sort of the ultimate in reader manipulation . . . so I really can't imagine him not writing with that kind of emotionally charged narrator, but his later ('60s!) work does see him going further and further up his own ass, as it were.

yes, author of the newest bio (blanking on his name) goes to great lengths to make WWII the focus of pretty much all of Salinger's life/work...and is fairly convincing about it, I suppose. the one story where one of the characters swears not to talk about the war after it's over is important it seems--salnger's subsequent work was in a lot of ways an attempt to talk about it without really talking about it, maybe?

That's pretty interesting. When I worked in a college library a couple of students were doing papers on Salinger's supposed P.T.S.D. and its connection on his work.

yeah it was interesting. though tbh he seems like he was kind of a weird dude before the war too.

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

i think there's a pretty substantial history of writers writing for others that aren't necessarily strangers.

The whole idea of writing a novel that you don't want strangers to read is pretty wackadoo

i seem to recall JDS said somewhere (prob in one of those memoirs by other ppl) that the reason he'd chosen to stop publishing was the flood of invasive publicity that accompanied each new book. if that's the case, then his decision to just write for himself (and presumably posthumous publication) seems understandable to me. it's not like he needed the money.

the joyce maynard book is very weird, not least because maynard didn't seem to have really processed her experiences even like 30 years later. my gf went to school with her kids.

I suspect that the reason there is no material is that Salinger had nothing left to say, beyond notating Chinese medicine treatments, but I would love to be proven wrong.

he mentioned in a few of the letters that he had finished several book-length manuscripts, and some other accounts seem to back that up.

who will be the 21st century max brod?

max brod is fuckin satan incarnate and I spit when I hear his name

hack-ptooie max brod

What'd he do to you?

he invented the concept of putting prose before bros

OK, that's pretty funny.

who will be the 21st century max brod?
Dmitry Nabokov.

Here's an account of answering his mail (it was her job):
http://www.slate.com/id/2243299/ Note links on to other Slate pieces on Salinger; should be something like A Salinger Companion (Salinger: A Hermit's Companion ?), with contributors from academic to indie intelligentsia to whackiedoodle, like some of the better Dyliania collections.

"Dylaniana", I guess (should be something better)

Also, re unpublished Salinger manuscripts at Princeton ( NPR had also somebody else's account of reading this story, I but can't find it; other guy said he thought "Bowling Balls" was great while he was reading it, but cooled off later)
http://nassauweekly.com/articles/1217/ In the 70s, a bootleg collection of unpublished Salinger stories was reviewed in the Voice; with comments on even more unpub, not included in the boot. Reviewer really liked some of these tales, but said most tended to confirm his suspicion re Salinger's inability/resistance to face getting older (as a motivation for not exposing his stories to further criticism and/or increasingly cult-like fandom)

he invented the concept of putting prose before bros

― love in a grain elevator (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a+

so what does an author like that sound like when he's writing for no one but himself?

Sadly, he probably sounds like the Hapworth story - the Glasses become not only the subject matter but the audience as well.

I can't believe Salinger would have wanted his manuscripts (if they exist) destroyed, and even if he did I can't imagine anyone would do it. There's probably someone appointed by his literary agency sorting through his papers as we speak, but it'll take years and years and nothing will be prepared for publication for another two decades or something.

Reportedly, in Nassau Weekly link above, the Princeton stash can't be published until 2060.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41y1uNPrtPL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Any word on new Salinger yet? (This question needs to be asked like once a month until they finally release something.)

Poor Holden doesn't seem very poular these days... Young people often seem to regard him as spoiled, obnoxious, self pitying, whiny, self indulgent,Self centered etc... My response to this is that while there may be some or even a lot of truth to these accusations, for heaven sake- he is a TEENAGER... What do people expect of him? That he have the wisdom and maturity and emotional strength of an adult? Holden isn't supposed to be a saint or a role model, he is simply a troubled, confused, sensative adolecent... GIVE HIM SOME SLACK PEOPLE!

haven't read catcher since high school (liked it then), but over the last few weeks i've read or re-read just about everything else he's published, and if there aren't more glass stories waiting to be released someday the remainder of my life will be poorer for it

fair bit of news back in January

this isn't a poke, aero, but can I ask, just wrt your anti max brodism hate campaign, where you stand on this kind of thing, specifically regarding salinger? asking because, as someone who is generally ambivalent about that kind of ethics debate, salinger's the only guy who I have a weird sense of revenance towards, & an awkward sense of intrusion when I'm reading about. I was living near an archive holding some letters he wrote in the nineties, last summer, so went & read them, & like obviously I did it, so any qualms are beside the point, but it all feels particularly dubious to me given how the one line bio the guy spent his lifetime peddling was just "I don't want people to know this stuff". the touches of information you get about his army years or the beginning of his step away from publishing are always so tantalising, but at the same time whenever I've seen one of the books at the library or w/e I don't have the heart to read them.

yeah totally fair question - I was only thinking about Salinger because I'd been thinking again about how I want to reanimate Max Brod so I can punch him in the face. with Salinger we know that he wanted privacy - so I think he ought to have been afforded that in his daily life, which, thanks to some awesome neighbors from what I hear, he generally got. I think that Joyce M. book was a total bullshit move, just in general human terms (though so is an old dude writing to the girl he sees in the NY Times magazine and saying "let's talk, young writer" when what he seems to've meant is "you're hot, I'll give you access to the inner sanctum if you swing by") - but just gut level (and this is an inconsistency, I guess, or an indication of something malfunctioning with me spiritually), I care less about people's personal privacy after death than I do about their wishes for their work. Publishing, living a public life by choosing to make your work public, seems to me a type of consent for biography, maybe? It seems so to me: if you put your stuff out there, and it moves people, people are gonna wanna know your story, and tell it. "Leave me the fuck alone" seems fair and should be respected, but especially after you die: you published. You put yourself out there, nobody made you do that. People are gonna wanna tell your story.

With the work it's different: I don't think anybody has any right to publish/release/make available an author's work without his/her explicit imprimatur. I think Emily Dickinson's sister got it right: she asked her sister to burn her correspondence, which she did. She was right to do so. E.D. said nothing like this about her poetry, so her sister published it. We don't really know what Salinger said about his work; if he had a will stipulating "destroy anything remaining," then it should be destroyed unread. He can be biographised as much as anybody likes now that he's dead as far as I'm concerned, it's really a different issue to me.

hey ty for that. idk if i am anywhere similar - i guess it perhaps isn't so much that someone should accept that they might prompt a biography that sways me, so much as it is that it's a stretch to think you should have such far-reaching control over other people's writing. but that's fair. i kinda just can't believe there's a film, though, & wrt there being footage & whatnot involved i'd imagine it runs into the same weird grey area as the excerpts from his letters, ie things that were specifically generated with an intended & limited audience in mind being made public.

it is all so interesting though. there was a piece in the guardian after he died with some shots & remembrance by lillian ross, including this pic of them at the beach, & goddamn if this isn't just down to the colour of the towel how i picture/d seymour when i read bananafish a million years ago. the work stands as tall as anything i think but the mess of details regarding the guy's own peculiarities & the temperaments of his characters are fascinating.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ml9vub3JGHU/S4sBEDKSCpI/AAAAAAAABII/qFXckuuieck/s400/Salinger+and+sister.jpg

What a picture!

With the work it's different: I don't think anybody has any right to publish/release/make available an author's work without his/her explicit imprimatur. I think Emily Dickinson's sister got it right: she asked her sister to burn her correspondence, which she did. She was right to do so. E.D. said nothing like this about her poetry, so her sister published it. We don't really know what Salinger said about his work; if he had a will stipulating "destroy anything remaining," then it should be destroyed unread. He can be biographised as much as anybody likes now that he's dead as far as I'm concerned, it's really a different issue to me.

― not feeling those lighters (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, March 25, 2013 2:18 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wait, if ED never explicitly consented to the posthumous publishing of her poetry, and her sister published it, how is that getting it right? (from your perspective)

i feel obliged to link to this article, even though i can't honestly recommend that anyone read it, because it more or less confirms my long-held suspicion that ron rosenbaum is the single most long-winded blowhard writing today:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_spectator/2013/06/j_d_salinger_and_eastern_religion_are_there_any_lost_books_still_in_the.single.html

feel like a predisposition to just ignoring all salingerism arising from now on is gonna be real useful. i watched the trailer for the weinstein movie, it looks like offensive, rooting-through-trashcan garbage.

yes, that documentary looks pretty shitty -- leaning hard on the 'his books inspired ppl to KILL!' angle is especially gross and stupid. the only thing i can imagine making it worthwhile is if they found a recording of salinger's voice -- i've always wondered what he sounded like.

i feel obliged to link to this article, even though i can't honestly recommend that anyone read it, because it more or less confirms my long-held suspicion that ron rosenbaum is the single most long-winded blowhard writing today:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_spectator/2013/06/j_d_salinger_and_eastern_religion_are_there_any_lost_books_still_in_the.single.html

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, July 1, 2013 2:03 PM (25 minutes ago)

ugh what a total prick

Slate readers might recall the series of stories I wrote to persuade the late writer’s son Dmitri to cease his three decades of dithering and finally make a decision as to whether he would burn his father’s last incomplete draft of a novel (The Original of Laura) as his father had instructed him—or publish it. (By the time Dmitri went ahead and published it and thanked me in the acknowledgements for the campaign I’d waged, I had decided it was a mistake; he should have burned it.)

I blame whatever happened to this brave and gifted man on account of Hitler. I would, wouldn’t I—I wrote a book called Explaining Hitler.

I’m not always one to find the solution to literary enigmas in biography—my Shakespeare book did not concern itself with who the Dark Lady of the Sonnets was.

i mean there's his being entitled to salinger's work but then there's his shitting on "zooey" and "seymour". diaf

Enough with the posthumous books already

http://www.slate.com/dont/justdont/youalreadykn/dontdoit/okayiguessyouget/arts/j_d_salinger_and_eastern_religion_are_there_any_lost_books_still_in_the.single.html

I’d been tracking the question of the ghost manuscripts—do they exist, will they ever see the light of day—for some time. And recent developments put me back on the case, this time with a new approach. A direct appeal, like the one I used with the Nabokov estate.

i think this guy watches too much tv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QLcwIu2m5F8#at=5429

1 hour 29 minutes in

umm

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/business/media/film-on-j-d-salinger-claims-more-books-coming.html?from=homepage

holla at the publishing insider interviewed who dares to speculate that these could be one of the publishing events of the year

One collection, to be called “The Family Glass,” would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.

*explodes*

look god, i'll go to church every week, just let that be true

how do i shot rosary

finding it amusing & nice how occasionally remembering & considering this has fixed 2015 in my head, like it is the abstract & unknowable future but now I see myself strutting around with his religious-manual-cum-novel under my arm, nbd, it's just 2015 & I'm reading some impossibly tangible new JD Salinger volume