Three J.D. Salinger Stories Out of Print for 70 Years Now Available

July 30, 2014

Three Early StoriesDarrin Devault and Tom Graves of independent publisher Devault-Graves have published three stories written by a young J.D. Salinger in the 1940s. The collection, J.D. Salinger: Three Early Stories, available as print-on-demand, as well as in e-book and audiobook format, is the first “legally sound” book by Salinger to be published in fifty years.

The late author, widely celebrated for The Catcher in the Rye (1951), had not published anything since the release of “Hapworth 16, 1924” in the June 19, 1965 edition of the New Yorker. Indeed, while he was alive, the reclusive author protected all his works-in-progress and criticized the unauthorized publication of his early work in a 1974 interview with The New York Times. "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing,” he said. “It's peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."

After learning of twenty-one stories written-and-yet-unpublished prior to the publication of The Catcher in the Rye through Shane Salerno’s 2013 documentary about Salinger, Devault and Graves began the extensive search for world rights to the author’s work, employing the extensive assistance of the Library of Congress and intellectual property attorneys. They discovered that three of the twenty-one stories—“The Young Folks,” “Go See Eddie,” and “Once a Week Won’t Kill You”—had never been registered to the author.

Since Three Early Stories was published last month and made available on Amazon, lawyers investigated the matter to ensure that the Salinger Trust’s rights had not been infringed on; that case, however, is considered “settled.”

Graves said to Publisher’s Weekly, “The old man himself may not have liked what we've done. But we have done our best to respect his legacy and present a handsome product that would not have embarrassed him.”

The first of Salinger’s works to include illustrations, Three Early Stories contains Salinger’s first two published short stories, “The Young Folks,” from Story magazine in 1940, and “Go See Eddie,” published in the University of Kansas City Review in the same year. The third story, “Once a Week Won’t Kill You,” appeared in a 1944 issue of Story magazine.

 

Source: The Guardian


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