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SECRETS
CORNISH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1965–2010
SHANE SALERNO: While the Salinger estate has refused to acknowledge that Salinger’s legendary secret manuscripts even exist, there is a clear record of their existence from eyewitnesses dating back decades.
On the 1961 dust jacket of Franny and Zooey, Salinger states that he is at work on a “narrative series . . . about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses.” He calls it “a long-term project” and confesses, “I love working on these Glass stories, I’ve been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them.”
On the 1963 dust jacket for Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction Salinger writes, “The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker. Whatever their differences in mood or effect, they are both very much concerned with Seymour Glass, who is the main character in my still-uncompleted series about the Glass family.” He then adds, “There is only my word for it, granted, but I have several new Glass stories coming along—waxing, dilating—each in its own way.” He concludes, “Oddly, the joys and satisfactions of working on the Glass family peculiarly increase and deepen for me with the years.”
Salinger’s own words are revealing: “long-term project” and “several new Glass stories coming along.” We know two things for certain. First, Salinger published only one more story, and that was “Hapworth 16, 1924.” Second, Salinger continued to write. He simply chose not to publish.
Numerous eyewitnesses report that Salinger was writing every day, had a vault in which he stored completed manuscripts, and had a detailed, color-coded filing system for the condition of each story.
On October 16, 1966, Salinger wrote a letter to his friend Michael Mitchell. As reported by Sharon Steel: “The letter closes with a description of Salinger’s new manuscripts, which he’s hidden for a decade and doesn’t feel up to showing anybody. Salinger writes, ‘I have ten, twelve years of work piled around. . . . I have two particular scripts—books, really—that I’ve been hoarding and picking at for years, and these two I think that you would love.’ ”
In 1972 Joyce Maynard heard “typing every day,” reported seeing “two full manuscripts,” and was shown a “genealogy of the Glass family.” She also confirmed the location of a “safe” just off Salinger’s bedroom. In At Home in the World she writes, “He has compiled stacks of notes and notebooks concerning the habits and backgrounds of the Glasses—music they like, places they go, episodes in their history. Even the parts of their lives that he may not write about, he needs to know. He fills in the facts as diligently as a parent, keeping up to date with the scrapbooks.” Maynard confirmed and expanded these statements when I interviewed her for eighteen hours over two days in 2008.
Scottish poet Alastair Reid—a longtime friend of Salinger’s dating back to Sarah Lawrence College, where Reid was teaching and where Salinger was dating a student—visited him in Cornish. “There are more books,” Reid told the Sunday Herald of Scotland. “I know that they exist. He showed me them, handled two of them in front of my eyes. And he said to me once, “You know, the Glass family have been growing old just as you and I have.”
In November 1974 Salinger told New York Times reporter Lacey Fosburgh, “I like to write, I love to write”; he was “writing, long hours, every day.” He added, “I don’t necessarily intend to publish posthumously.”
In the summer of 1980 Betty Eppes interviewed Salinger and asked him what he was writing about. “I will state this,” Salinger told her. “It is of far more significance than anything I ever wrote about Holden. I have really serious issues I am trying to tackle with these new writing projects.”
In 1992 William Maxwell, Salinger’s former New Yorker editor, told John Blades of the Chicago Tribune that he and Salinger “talk once a year, every two years, or letters go back and forth. To the best of my knowledge, he’s never stopped writing. It must be quite a pile by now.”
In March of 1999 and again in 2010, Jerry Burt of Plainfield, New Hampshire, a former neighbor who was friendly with Salinger, told the Associated Press that Salinger told him “he was keeping a stack of manuscripts in a safe.”
On September 13, 2000, Margaret Salinger told NPR’s Diane Rehm, “I do know he’s been working all these years because, probably the second time I’d ever been allowed in his study, he very proudly showed me a set of files, where a red dot meant this is ready to go upon my death, a green dot meant this needs editing, but it’s okay. It just needs some editing.”
There is no question that the manuscripts exist. The question is, What are they?
In 2008 J. D. Salinger created the J. D. Salinger Literary Trust, of which he was sole trustee during his lifetime. On July 24, 2008, Salinger assigned copyright “in The Catcher in the Rye, along with other works authored by him, to the Trust and duly recorded that assignment.” Salinger signed this document on October 15, 2008, in Hanover, New Hampshire. Betsy H. Bowse was the notary. Upon his death, his wife, Colleen M. Salinger, and his son, Matthew R. Salinger, became the coexecutors of the J. D. Salinger Literary Trust and were bound by the trust and Salinger’s express wishes, which included never allowing a film of The Catcher in the Rye to be sold or produced and, most important, authorizing a specific timetable for the release of more than forty-five years of work after his death.
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Based on private interviews conducted over nine years, we have learned that J. D. Salinger approved works for publication.
We were able to obtain information about a number of those books and stories.
The following information was provided, documented, and verified by two independent and separate sources.
The first book is titled The Family Glass; it collects all the existing stories about the Glass family together with five new stories that significantly extend the world of Salinger’s fictional family. The five new stories are about Seymour Glass; the first four explore the thirty years leading up to Seymour’s suicide and his lifelong quest for God. In the first new story, Seymour and Buddy are recruited at a party in 1926 for the children’s quiz show It’s a Wise Child. The last story deals with Seymour’s life after death. The stories are narrated by Buddy Glass and are saturated in the teachings of the Vedantic religion. The book opens with a detailed genealogy of the Glass family.
Salinger has also written a “manual” of Vedanta—with short stories, almost fables, woven into the text; this is precisely the form of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, which Salinger called, in 1952, “the religious book of the century.” Salinger’s “manual” is the explicit fulfillment of his stated desire to “circulate,” through his writing, the ideas of Vedanta. Further evidence of Salinger’s devotion over more than half a century to Vedanta is that he donated a substantial and continuing portion of his estate to the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York and to other organizations that share similar religious beliefs.
In addition, there is one novel, a World War II love story based on Salinger’s complex relationship with his first wife, Sylvia Welter. The two main characters—Sergeant X from “Esmé,” recovering from a nervous breakdown, and Sylvia’s fictional counterpart—meet in post–World War II Germany and begin a passionate love affair. As did Salinger and Sylvia, the two characters share telepathic communication.
Salinger has also written a novella that takes the form of a counterintelligence agent’s diary entries during World War II, culminating in the Holocaust. The diary entries take place in many different towns and cities and involve his interactions with civilians and soldiers struggling with the day-to-day horror of war.
Separate from the new Glass stories, the Vedanta manual, and Salinger’s new war fiction is a complete retooling of Salinger’s unpublished twelve-page 1942 story “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans.” The original version can be found at Princeton University’s Firestone Library and is one of the earliest of the Ca
ulfield stories, in which a very young child nears the edge of a cliff. This reimagined version of the story will be collected with the other six Caulfield stories as well as new stories and The Catcher in the Rye, creating a complete history of the Caulfield family.
Salinger’s chronicles of two extraordinary families, the Glasses and the Caulfields—written from 1941 to 2008, when he conveyed his body of work to the J. D. Salinger Literary Trust—will be the masterworks for which he is forever known.
These works will begin to be published in irregular installments starting between 2015 and 2020.
FICTION IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF PUBLICATION
1940
“The Young Folks.” Story, March–April, 26–30.
“Go See Eddie.” University of Kansas City Review 7 (December 1940): 121–24.
1941
“The Hang of It.” Collier’s, July 12, 1941, 22.
“The Heart of a Broken Story.” Esquire, September 1941, 32, 131–33.
1942
“The Long Debut of Lois Taggett.” Story, September–October 1942, 28–34.
“Personal Notes on an Infantryman.” Collier’s, December 12, 1942, 96.
1943
“The Varioni Brothers.” Saturday Evening Post, July 17, 1943, 12–13, 76–77.
1944
“Both Parties Concerned.” Saturday Evening Post, February 26, 1944, 14, 47–48.
“Soft-Boiled Sergeant.” Saturday Evening Post, April 15, 1944, 18, 82, 84–85.
“Last Day of the Last Furlough.” Saturday Evening Post, July 15, 1944, 26–27, 61–62, 64.
“Once a Week Won’t Kill You.” Story, November–December 1944, 23–27.
1945
“Elaine.” Story, March–April 1945, 38–47.
“A Boy in France.” Saturday Evening Post, March 31, 1945, 21, 92.
“This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise.” Esquire, October 1945, 54–56, 147–49.
“The Stranger.” Collier’s, December 1, 1945, 18, 77.
“I’m Crazy.” Collier’s, December 22, 1945, 36, 48, 51. Incorporated into The Catcher in the Rye.
1946
“Slight Rebellion Off Madison.” The New Yorker, December 21, 1946, 82–86. Incorporated into The Catcher in the Rye.
1947
“A Young Girl in 1941 with No Waist at All.” Mademoiselle, May 1947, 222–23, 292–302.
“The Inverted Forest.” Cosmopolitan, December 1947, 73–80, 85–86, 88, 90, 92, 95–96, 98, 100, 102, 107, 109.
1948
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” The New Yorker, January 31, 1948, 21–25.
“A Girl I Knew.” Good Housekeeping, February 1948, 36–37, 186, 188, 191–96.
“Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut.” The New Yorker, March 20, 1948, 30–36.
“Just Before the War with the Eskimos.” The New Yorker, June 5, 1948, 37–40, 42, 44, 46.
“Blue Melody.” Cosmopolitan, September 1948, 50–51, 112–19.
1949
“The Laughing Man.” The New Yorker, March 19, 1949, 27–32.
“Down at the Dinghy.” Harper’s, April 1949, 87–91.
1950
“For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” The New Yorker, April 8, 1950, 28–36.
1951
“Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes.” The New Yorker, July 14, 1951, 20–24.
The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, July 16, 1951.
1952
“De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period.” World Review, no. 39, May 1952, 33–48.
1953
“Teddy.” The New Yorker, January 31, 1953, 26–34, 36, 38, 40–41, 44–45.
Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown, April 6, 1953.
1955
“Franny.” The New Yorker, January 29, 1955, 24–32, 35–43.
“Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters.” The New Yorker, November 19, 1955, 51–116.
1957
“Zooey.” The New Yorker, May 4, 1957, 32–139.
1959
“Seymour: An Introduction.” The New Yorker, June 6, 1959, 42–119.
1961
Franny and Zooey. Boston: Little, Brown, September 14, 1961.
1963
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Boston: Little, Brown, January 28, 1963.
1965
“Hapworth 16, 1924.” The New Yorker, June 19, 1965, 32–113.
LOST STORIES, UNCOLLECTED STORIES, AND PUBLISHED LETTERS
“The Survivors,” 1940. Bibliographer Jack R. Sublette indicates that Salinger refers to this story in a 1940 letter to Whit Burnett. The story was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“The Lovely Dead Girl at Table Six,” 1941. Biographer Ian Hamilton says that Salinger wrote this story in August 1941. The story was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Lunch for Three,” 1941. Ben Yagoda, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, writes that in 1941 the New Yorker considered this story, which was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“I Went to School with Adolf Hitler,” 1941. Yagoda says that in 1941 the New Yorker turned down this story, which cannot be found anywhere now.
“Monologue for a Watery Highball,” 1941. Yagoda indicates that in 1941 the New Yorker turned down this story, which was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Mrs. Hincher,” 1941. In an October 31, 1941, letter to Elizabeth Murray, Salinger refers to this story as being nearly completed. The story, whose protagonist is Paula Hincher and which was later titled “Paula,” was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“The Kissless Life of Reilly,” 1942. Sublette says that, in a 1942 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which cannot be found anywhere now.
“Men Without Hemingway,” 1942. Hamilton says that, in a 1942 letter to Murray, Salinger refers to this story, which the New Yorker turned down. It was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Over the Seas Let’s Go, Twentieth Century Fox,” 1942. Hamilton writes that, in a 1942 letter to Murray, Salinger refers to this story, which the New Yorker turned down. It was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Paula,” 1942. Salinger’s first bibliographer, Donald M. Fiene, indicates that this story, formerly called “Mrs. Hincher,” was bought by Stag magazine in 1942, but the story was never published. The magazine no longer has the story, which cannot be found anywhere now.
“Paris,” 1943. In a 1943 letter to Elizabeth Murray, Salinger refers to this story, which was never published and cannot be found anywhere.
“Rex Passard on the Planet Mars,” 1943. Sublette indicates that, in a 1943 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Two Lonely Men,” 1943. Sublette writes that the story is set “at a United States Army base in the South [and] tells the story of a developing friendship between Master Sergeant Charles Maydee and Captain Huggins,” but “Maydee apparently begins having an affair” with Huggins’s wife. The story—listed in the table of contents for Salinger’s book The Young Folks, which Story Press planned to publish but never did—can now be found, and read only on location, in the Whit Burnett–Story magazine archive in the Firestone Library at Princeton University.
“The Broken Children,” 1943. Sublette says that, in a 1943 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was never published and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Bitsey,” 1943. Sublette indicates that, in a 1943 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was included in the table of contents for The Young Folks. “Bitsey”—or “Bitsy”—cannot be found anywhere now.
“The Children’s Echelon,” 1944. Sublette writes that the story’s narrator is Bernice Herndon, an eighteen-year-old diarist, one of whose entries refers to children riding a carousel. “The Children’s Echelon” was listed in the table of contents for The Young F
olks and can now be found, and read only on location, in the Burnett-Story archive in Princeton’ s Firestone Library.
“Boy Standing in Tennessee,” 1944. Sublette states that, in a 1944 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was listed in the table of contents for The Young Folks and cannot be found anywhere now.
“Total War Diary,” 1944. Sublette says that, in a 1944 letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was probably rewritten and retitled “The Children’s Echelon.”
“What Babe Saw, or Ooh-La-La!” 1944. Sublette says that, in a September 9, 1944, letter to Burnett, Salinger refers to this story, which was revised and/or retitled, then published in the March 31, 1945, issue of the Saturday Evening Post as “A Boy in France.” The original manuscript of “What Babe Saw, or Ooh-La-La!” cannot be found anywhere now.
“What Got into Curtis in the Woodshed,” 1945. This story was included in a list compiled in 1945 by Salinger’s literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, and was also included in the table of contents for The Young Folks. The story cannot be found anywhere now.
“The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” 1945. Sublette states that in this story, “Vincent Caulfield writes of his relationship with one of his younger brothers, Kenneth, and of Kenneth’s death” after swimming in rough Cape Cod waters. A younger sister, Phoebe Caulfield, is mentioned; Holden Caulfield writes a letter from summer camp. “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls” was listed in the table of contents for The Young Folks, and the eighteen-page manuscript (typed) can now be found, and read only on location, in the Burnett-Story archive in Princeton’s Firestone Library.
“Birthday Boy,” 1946. “Birthday Boy” concerns Ethel’s visit to the hospital to see her alcoholic boyfriend, Ray. Never published, a nine-page, typed manuscript of “Birthday Boy” can be read, only on location, in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin.
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