Discovering New Salinger Stories

[FreeThinker]

It used to be a rite of passage and an act of rebellion for adolescents to read Catcher in the Rye. I read it in the ninth grade and didn't understand all the hub-bub. Of course, that was 1972 and things were a little different then than in the fifties...Anyway, a treasure trove of previously unknown Salinger work is being revealed and three stories have been posted online. I don't know if I approve. I want to read them, but I understand a writer not wanting certain work to see the light of day.

Report from CBS News.

[Merkin]

... I don't know if I approve. I want to read them, but I understand a writer not wanting certain work to see the light of day.

I know I don't approve, for I feel strongly that a writer should be able to decide upon his "legacy" and if he has unfinished work which he does not deem worth exposing to public view that should be a judgement call he is entitled to make. The problem is that no one lives in expectation of dying the next moment, and very few of us, writers included, are prepared enough to control what we leave behind.

Writers from prior generations had to deal with their paper trail, and they were very often not successful in suppressing manuscript pages and notes that they did not want to see the light of day after their demise. Literary agents, collectors, and grad students all conspire to dig out even the barest scrap of paper left behind, hoping to make their fortunes or their reputations through such discoveries. We readers don't help, because we usually cheer on such efforts to bring forth some previously unknown or undiscovered work, thinking somehow that once a writer is dead his oeuvre belongs to the world.

Contemporary writers at least have some options to prevent posthumous exploitation, provided they are computer savvy, since they can hide work in the Cloud or otherwise disguise it electronically.

[The Pecman]

What's baffling about J.D. Salinger (and also Harper Lee, who is still alive) is that they adamantly refuse to allow their works to be legitimately sold as eBooks. As a result, the only way you can get bona fide American classics like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird on eBooks is to do so illegally, which is sad to me.

[Cole Parker]

What's baffling about J.D. Salinger (and also Harper Lee, who is still alive) is that they adamantly refuse to allow their works to be legitimately sold as eBooks. As a result, the only way you can get bona fide American classics like Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird on eBooks is to do so illegally, which is sad to me.

Well, there is another way. They're still in print and you can buy paperback copies for less than $10.

C

[The Pecman]

Well, there is another way. They're still in print and you can buy paperback copies for less than $10.

You can buy paperbacks of Salinger and Lee for less than $1. But there's whole generation of readers who only want to read eBooks on their Kindles, iPads, computer screens, and other eBook readers. It's sad to me that these authors' estates (and actually Lee herself, who is still alive) are ignoring this huge market and missing out on making hundreds of thousands of dollars on potential eBook sales. It took J.K. Rowling almost ten years to (reluctantly) allow eBook sales of the Harry Potter books, but that came after millions of illegal PDFs -- of extremely good quality -- flooded the internet.

I'm glad that young people will read at all in this modern era; what they read them on is of little importance. When you think about it, 90% of most books and magazines are a tremendous waste of trees, ink, and transportation; if you can have a beautifully-readable publication as an eBook that takes up maybe a couple of MB, it's a lot more efficient in terms of sales and readability. Only the idea and artistry of the work matters, not how it's delivered.

On the other hand: I wouldn't want to read an iPad in the bathtub, particularly if I dropped it.

I think there's a time and place for everything. I just spent $120 on printed books this past week, but I think I have about 250 books on my iPad (which is not even 2/3 filled). Each has its place, but I tend to buy physical media when there's a chance I may give it away to a friend, or it's particularly illustration-heavy and needs the benefit of high-quality color printing. But for fiction, eBooks are fine.

Try one for yourself and see what you think. iPads have some severe limitations, but for certain things -- watching videos, listening to music, streaming movies, reading eBooks, web surfing -- they're OK.

[Cole Parker]

I'm afraid I'm a creature of habit. I read for probably an hour or two in bed each night before turning out the light. I read books written on paper. I have no intention of changing.

C

[The Pecman]

I'm afraid I'm a creature of habit. I read for probably an hour or two in bed each night before turning out the light. I read books written on paper. I have no intention of changing.

And I confess I'm reading not one but two non-fiction 600-page books simultaneously right now -- in print. But... I finished reading two or three books on the iPad in the last month. Try it -- ya might like it.

[Paul]

I'm a person who can't just turn out the light and expect to fall asleep; I have to drop off while reading. It's been like this for as long as I can remember, back to the days when it was comic books, which would be strewn about my bed, slept on, mangled, falling off the sides and collecting with the dust bunnies under the bed. Much later, when staying with friends, I had to take to bringing along my own clip-on overhead lamp in case their guest room wasn't so equipped. It also meant that I'd have a light burning all night long. If I did happen to wake up briefly, the mere action of reaching up to switch it off would often be enough to break my sleep cycle and there I'd be again, unable to drift off.

Well, mine is obviously a personal idiosyncrasy, but the self-illuminated, turns-itself-off iPad has proved to be a boon. That beyond all the other conveniences, like remembering where I was, instant access to word definitions and explanations of unfamiliar concepts and references, plus the ability to search texts for events and characters mentioned scores of pages beforehand whose significance might have since slipped my mind. Who was that guy again?

For online reading, the Reader function in Safari has also made my reading life easier, since I'm not obliged to struggle against formatting that I find difficult to negotiate, such as font choices and text-vs.-background issues. That prompts this little rant about the iOS 7 implementation of this feature - it no longer uses a serif font, which I personally find much easier to follow in large blocks of text than the Helvetica that replaced it.

[Gee Whillickers]

Apparently a large portion of youth agree with you Cole (I'm the same way, there's something about ink and paper..though I do have a fair number of e-books as well):

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-readers-prefer-printed-ebooks

[FreeThinker]

Meanwhile, J.D. Salinger--and Generalissimo Francisco Franco-- are still dead.

After long and thoughtful thought, I have concluded the following conclusion. I agree with Merkin.

I have things I've written that I would never want anyone to read--and now they won't because I lost my thumb drive. And, there are things I've written that I wish no one had read, such as my rant in favor of beheading Confederate climate-change-deniers and denying the vote to any brothers named Koch.

A writer should feel very protective of his work and his legacy. Publishing something that wasn't, in the mind of the writer, ready for publication, something that he had decided wasn't, for whatever reason, worthy of publication, is a sin. Yes, we the readers may enjoy it, but the right of the writer-- or the write of the righter-- I think supersedes the desires--or the prurient curiosity--of the public. The prurient public must respect the writer.

Carry on.

[JamesSavik]

we must keep in mind that these are stories that he didn't intend for publication. They could be rough, incomplete, unpolished or any combination of the three.

Many authors write something and then sit on it for a while. Then they can go back to it fresh.

I would be horrified if I found out someone was in my stack of "developmental material". *ick*

[colinian]

I'm a "Young Adult" and I much prefer e-books to printed books. For casual reading I can use my tablet, smartphone, laptop, or desktop PC with the Kindle and nook e-reader software so no matter where I am I can get back to a book and it will sync with the cloud and put me right where I left off no matter which device I had been reading the book previously. For technical books and textbooks I prefer the nook Study e-reader software with its highlighting and ability to copy sections with full citation.

Colin