J. D Salinger’s Unseen Works to be Published

The son of J. D Salinger has confirmed that the author of The Catcher in the Rye wrote a significant amount of work that has never been seen and that he and his father’s widow are preparing the previously unseen work for publication.

Its eight years since Salinger died in 2010 leaving behind a body of published works including the iconic The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, For Esme with Love and Squalor and other works. However, the author had not published anything since 1965’s New Yorker story Hapworth 16, 1924, his last published work.

For years rumours have been circulating that the author of one of the 20th centuries most iconic novels must have written other stories during the years he lived, fairly reclusively, in the New Hampshire village of Cornish. Last week, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Matt Salinger confirmed that his father never stopped writing and that he intends to share it all ‘at some point’.

Matt says his father was full of ideas and thoughts. He said “He’d be driving the car and he’d pull over to write something and laugh to himself – sometimes he’d read it to me, sometimes he wouldn’t – and next to every chair he had a notebook. He just decided that the best thing for his writing was not to have a lot of interactions with people, literary types in particular. He didn’t want to be playing in those poker games, he wanted to, as he would encourage every would-be writer to do, you know, stew in your own juices.”

In 2013 a documentary on the author suggested that five new books from the author were coming, including a short story featuring Holden Caulfield, and a story based on Salinger’s brief marriage to Sylvia, a Nazi collaborator, but his son was keen to squash those rumours, stating that the documentary was made without consultation with the family.

Matt did not reveal specifics about the new stories but did state that it wasn’t yet ready for publication. Watch this space for more news, we certainly will be!