New work by J.D. Salinger set to be published for the first time in half a century [tr]

UK Daily Mail ^ | February 2, 2019 | Chantalle Edwards

[C19fan]

Never-before-seen, new work by J.D. Salinger, will be published for the first time in more than 50 years. The Catcher in the Rye author's son, Matt Salinger revealed to the Guardian that his father 'never stopped writing' up until his death in 2010 - despite not publishing anything after 1965. Actor and producer Matt Salinger, who played Captain America in the 1990 film said he was working with his father's widow Colleen O'Neill, to get all the material ready for publication. Matt Salinger has joint charge of the literary estate with O'Neill, J.D. Salinger's third wife, who he married in 1988.

[C19fan]

Seems like a rite of passage of American HS students to be forced fed "Catcher in the Rye."

[Cowboy Bob]

Will it suck as bad a Catcher in the Rye?

[mindburglar]

I always thought he became a hermit because every high school kid in America wanted to kick his ass for having to read that crap.

[Fresh Wind]

I was never forced to read that book and never did it voluntarily, but I do recall paging through it to find the “f-bomb”, because at the time it was such a novelty to see it in print.

Times have certainly changed.

[AndyJackson]

Never-before-seen, new work by J.D. Salinger, will be published for the first time in more than 50 years.

It can't suck as bad as the writing in this article. This is about 100 times redundant. "Newly revealed Salinger work to be published"

[Vaquero]

I’m too busy. I gotta watch the pond to see if the ducks are going to get frozen into it this winter.

[Califreak]

I’m more angry at the guy that gifted us with Bigger Thomas.

And the english teachers who made us read his story.

[Seruzawa]

CITR along with Moby Dick and Last of the Mohicans was a real High School Horror Trifecta. Slogging through that crap was hell.

At least I had one merciful English teacher who let us read Fahrenheit 451 instead of that Hemingway crap piece The Old Man and the Sea. Why are all of the “Great American Authors” so dammed awful?

[rlmorel]

I hate the book as well.

[Paradox]

I actually liked the book. I dont exactly recall why. Felt “real”, not like the “phony” stuff they had us read all the time.

[GJones2]

I recall The Catcher in the Rye as being pretty good, good enough for me to want to go on and read the rest of Salinger's writings (and I still have the paperbacks stored in my back room somewhere). Some of the characters were a bit strange but, I thought. interesting.

Still, I don't have much hope for a work pieced together from what Salinger chose not to publish in his later years.

[P.O.E.]

J.D. Salinger is not dead. He's been seen working at a 7-11 in Ohio.

jk

[KosmicKitty]

I liked it. I read all of Salinger’s books available in 1975.

I like most of the books I had to read in High School. Steinbeck, Shakespeare, Swift, Vonnegut, Hemingway, Fitzgerald (F Scott and Zelda - Wrote a paper comparing “Tender is the Night” to “Save Me the Waltz.”), Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Faulkner, Melville, Joyce, The Bible, and on and on.

There was one book I absolutely did not read - Doris Lessing’s “Briefing for a Descent into Hell.” Obviously I loved to read, but I could not get into that one!!

[NativeSon]

Because they sucked- it was probably some union deal that made their garbage required reading.

At least Hemmingway tried to help us.

[luvbach1]

I guess Mark Twain’s works were too old to make the reading lists.

[GJones2]

> I actually liked the book. I dont exactly recall why. Felt “real”, not like the “phony” stuff they had us read all the time.

“Phony”, the word Holden Caulfield used so much. :-) I think he was at times too intolerant, and didn’t allow for the normal weaknesses of others. There’s much that’s phony in the world, though. I thought so back then and still think so now, over half a century later.

[imardmd1]

I went against the trend, and read every Zane Grey Western that the library had just to infuriate my English teacher. The whole class had to read/follow Moby Dork and Silly Marner together, chapter by chapter, in class, and "discuss" them.

Secretly I read Anna Karenina at night with a flashlight under the covers. It was a bit too salacious for Mom and Dad to accept as fine literature. In those days (late '40s-early '50s) we got some pretty good closely edited short stories and novellas in the weekly and monthly magazines that are only a memory now.

Before Big TV, every home had lots of reading material. Now, the shelves of the second-hand stores are flooded with books from people that have gotten rid of their home library shelves to find enough wall to hang the 72 inch flat screen TV.

[Disambiguator]

I had to read “Death of a Salesman.” It was like having my brain rubbed with sandpaper.

[newfreep]

I always liked the video version of the LOTM

[Fiji Hill]

At least I had one merciful English teacher who let us read Fahrenheit 451 instead of that Hemingway crap piece The Old Man and the Sea. Why are all of the “Great American Authors” so dammed awful?

I have also wondered about that. Although I enjoyed Moby Dick, I didn't care for Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Walter Clark's The Ox Bow Incident or Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, all of which I read as a high school sophomore.

I also wondered why no American classic novel ever has a happy ending.

Apparently, I was fortunate not to have been assigned to read The Catcher in the Rye, which I have never to this day read, although I may eventually read it. I was also never assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read for the first time two years ago--and didn't like.

My favorite fiction book from my high school years was The Great Pacific War: A History of the American-Japanese Campaign of 1931-1933 by Hector C. Bywater (London: Constable, 1925), the story of an imaginary war between Japan and the US that became required reading by Japanese naval officers in the 1930's. But nonfiction came to dominate my outside reading, and it does to this day.