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JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

theguardian.com

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Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#3

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

I imagine he could have kept them as personal reference or for sentimental reasons, still wanting them to remain private.

Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#4

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

This is one area the digital age hasn't come up with an analogue (other than DMCA). Authors in some ways had less control over distribution (aside from self publishing, you had to go through a publishing house) but had more control over what got published.

Now, with digital distribution, once released, you can't put things back in the bottle (with a few exceptions like when Amazon or Apple do "recalls"), but for the most part, you can't undo things and that means authors have less control over what they produce. Maybe authors aren't allowed capriciousness anymore ("burn all my writings upon death").

Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#6

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

Salinger wanted his works to be published after his death.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/books/jd-salinger-new-boo...

"But in 2013, a documentary about the author and a related book offered a bold assertion: He had not only continued writing, but also left detailed notes to his trust about releasing the material between 2015 and 2020."

Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#7

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

Also, he's dead, so why do we care?

Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#8

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

Why not take that to its logical conclusion and claim: if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would never have written them in the first place?

To me it seems credible that a writer might want to hold on to some drafts, hoping to get round to editing them for publication, but doesn't want them edited by anyone else or published unedited. The question is, how to achieve that, seeing as one can't trust one's heirs? There are probably both legal and technical solutions.

Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms

#9
post #8

Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after being written.

Why not take that to its logical conclusion and claim: if he truly never wanted them to be read, he would never have written them in the first place? To me it seems credible that a writer might want to hold on to some drafts, hoping to get round to editing them for publication, but doesn't want them edited by anyone else or published unedited. The question is, how to achieve that, seeing as one can't trust one's heir…

Yes, but you may change your minde after writting it. Sometime you write something, and it's not what you think it would have been, and you don't want people to read it anymore.
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