Jamie (Internet remix)

Excuse me while I go all English major

Salinger hasn’t published in more than 40 years. In the few interviews he gave, he said that’s because once you publish something, readers feel that you owe them, but when you write only for yourself, it always belongs to you.

He’s right, of course. Once it’s out there for people to buy, someone else can interpret the work how they want (see Chapman, Mark David). But to steal a Zen koan, is art really art if no one sees it? Is the act of creating art enough?

Writing is a solitary pursuit, something Salinger and Pynchon have taken to the extreme. But Pynchon, at least, has continued to publish. Salinger stood pat on the strength of what he wrote in the span of about a decade. But anyone who writes — really writes — couldn’t think of just stopping.

So what happens to those manuscripts (assuming he didn’t burn them all)? Do his children fight about whether to release them? Does the existence of more Salinger material even have any bearing on his place in the pantheon? Or is he great BECAUSE he never published anything that was uneven?