I recall reading some of his unpublished writings after they were leaked on what.cd, and I'm sure if you dig around some you'd be able to find mirrors somewhere on the web. Included in the leak was "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", the supposed prequel to "Catcher in the Rye". The leaker claimed something like a 6TB(!) bounty for leaking it too.
JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
21–30 of 48 posts
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#22Some 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…
He should have put in his will and testament that all unfinished drafts should be destroyed. I don't believe it is possible to will property to people but put indefinite restrictions on legal usage of the property. I forget the exact term, but the restriction was put in place so that you don't get into a situation where estates are confined to operate in the manner that a long-dead great-great-great-great grandfather specified in their will, in contravention of the wishes of the current property owners who may have not even been alive when the will was written.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few posthumous items are coming out lately and the same comment keeps coming up: it's ok to have conflicting feelings. We can acknowledge we'd like to respect the artist's wishes and yet, they are gone—and I think it's ok to delve into their hidden lives, as long as no-one living is going to be put to shame.
Another unworkable posthumous wish was Albert Barnes, who was a patron of many impressionist painters around the turn of the last century: Renoir, Matisse, Degas, etc. He bought thousands of famous works and arranged them to his taste, tightly packed on the walls in a tiny building in Merion, PA, USA. The good news is the foundation could bring out now priceless masterworks on easels to compare close up for art class…
The documentary, "The Art of the Steal", which discusses the move of the art, did not portray the people behind the move in a very flattering light. My recollection is that some called it the biggest art heist of all time.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few posthumous items are coming out lately and the same comment keeps coming up: it's ok to have conflicting feelings. We can acknowledge we'd like to respect the artist's wishes and yet, they are gone—and I think it's ok to delve into their hidden lives, as long as no-one living is going to be put to shame.
Another unworkable posthumous wish was Albert Barnes, who was a patron of many impressionist painters around the turn of the last century: Renoir, Matisse, Degas, etc. He bought thousands of famous works and arranged them to his taste, tightly packed on the walls in a tiny building in Merion, PA, USA. The good news is the foundation could bring out now priceless masterworks on easels to compare close up for art class…
An "evil genie" type can find all kinds of loopholes in a wish. I'd disassemble the building, move the pieces of it inside a larger museum with better public access, and affix the old walls to "structural remediation", which is to say that the pieces of the old building would be held up with steel beams and cables instead of each other. The "storage facility" for the other 90% of the collection would--entirely coincidentally--be arranged nearly identically to traditional museum viewing galleries.
Then I'd tilt some of the works askew by a few degrees, just to irritate his ghost.
The Earth belongs to the living. I would support a new rule against perpetuities that would limit the control a dead person may exert over their legacy to no more than 20 years beyond their own death--to include copyrights and patents.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#25I remember that huge bounty for them on What.cd (RIP) with various discussions about how to go about getting a copy out of the Princeton library. Good times. I think the request might've ended up banned to attempt to avoid attracting more attention to the site after Microsoft COFEE[0] was actually uploaded there.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evide...
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#26I recall reading some of his unpublished writings after they were leaked on what.cd, and I'm sure if you dig around some you'd be able to find mirrors somewhere on the web. Included in the leak was "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls", the supposed prequel to "Catcher in the Rye". The leaker claimed something like a 6TB(!) bounty for leaking it too.
The discussion in that request thread about how to get the novel out of the reading room where one of the most entertaining ones I’ve read. I wish there was a backup.
People were going crazy with coming up with plans and spy grade equipment to take pictures. Good times.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#27This gives me the same feeling as all these old Prince recordings from his vault coming out. On one hand it feels wrong on the part of the family/rights owners to release this stuff against the wishes of the deceased, but on the other hand I really want that forbidden media.
The interview makes it pretty clear that it isn't being published against his wishes. He wanted it out there, just not while he was alive.
Now perhaps Salinger's son (and his widow) could be lying in the hope of profiting off his work, but if so he's chosen a strange way to go about it, blocking publication of his juvenilia and neglecting his own acting and producing career to spend what will apparently be the best part of twenty years collecting and editing it all.
Personally though, I think Matt Salinger's genuine. In fact, he comes across as extraordinarily respectful of his father's legacy. Would that we all had people willing to expend so much effort and care to honour us after we have passed.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#28This gives me the same feeling as all these old Prince recordings from his vault coming out. On one hand it feels wrong on the part of the family/rights owners to release this stuff against the wishes of the deceased, but on the other hand I really want that forbidden media.
The interview makes it pretty clear that it isn't being published against his wishes. He wanted it out there, just not while he was alive. Now perhaps Salinger's son (and his widow) could be lying in the hope of profiting off his work, but if so he's chosen a strange way to go about it, blocking publication of his juvenilia and neglecting his own acting and producing career to spend what will apparently be the best p…
He supposedly spent effort categorizing his works into works to be published as-is, edited before release, or to be destroyed.
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another unworkable posthumous wish was Albert Barnes, who was a patron of many impressionist painters around the turn of the last century: Renoir, Matisse, Degas, etc. He bought thousands of famous works and arranged them to his taste, tightly packed on the walls in a tiny building in Merion, PA, USA. The good news is the foundation could bring out now priceless masterworks on easels to compare close up for art class…
An "evil genie" type can find all kinds of loopholes in a wish. I'd disassemble the building, move the pieces of it inside a larger museum with better public access, and affix the old walls to "structural remediation", which is to say that the pieces of the old building would be held up with steel beams and cables instead of each other. The "storage facility" for the other 90% of the collection would--entirely coinci…
Wholeheartedly agree. Once you're dead, you're dead. One's last wishes should definitely be respected to the first degree. That is, whomever you will your money, possessions, or property to should get those things. There should not be any strings attached beyond that, to the extent that a living person could not tie those same strings (or choose later to untie them)
Re: JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms
#30This gives me the same feeling as all these old Prince recordings from his vault coming out. On one hand it feels wrong on the part of the family/rights owners to release this stuff against the wishes of the deceased, but on the other hand I really want that forbidden media.
Contrast Prince with Terry Pratchett, whose estate followed his wishes of destroying the hard drives containing Terry's unfinished works with a steamroller.[0]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchet...