Matt Salinger: ‘My father was writing for 50 years without publishing. That’s a lot of material’

In JD Salinger’s centenary year, his son and literary executor opens up about life with the Catcher in the Rye author – and for the first time, confirms there are unpublished works to come

Among all the dispute and conjecture that has surrounded the life of JD Salinger, one mystery remains especially puzzling. What did he produce after ceasing to publish his writing in 1965, and will it ever be read? It seemed possible that more work would come to light after Salinger’s death in 2010. In 2013 a documentary and accompanying book claimed, among other things, to describe the contents of five new Salinger books that would be forthcoming by 2020 at the latest, yet here we are at his centenary and there has been no sign.

I ask Salinger’s son Matt about the rumours of new material when we meet for breakfast near his home in Connecticut, and he doesn’t mince words. “They’re total trash,” he says. “The specific bullet-point dramatic quote-unquote reveals that have been made are utter bullshit. They have little to no bearing on reality.” He has been reluctant, until now, to talk about his father at all. “I’ve gotten away with not having this kind of conversation for 58 years,” he says. Still, he is ready, now, to confirm that other writing does exist. His father “teemed with ideas and thoughts, and he’d be driving the car and he’d pull over to write something and laugh to himself – sometimes he’d read it to me, sometimes he wouldn’t – and next to every chair he had a notebook.” He assures me that “most all of what he wrote will at some point be shared with the people that love reading his stuff”. When I ask why that moment hasn’t yet arrived, he is disarmingly direct. “It’s not ready. He wanted me to pull it together, and because of the scope of the job, he knew it would take a long time. This was somebody who was writing for 50 years without publishing, so that’s a lot of material. So there’s not a reluctance or a protectiveness: when it’s ready, we’re going to share it.”

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GfQc1D