
JD Salinger's unseen writings to be published, family confirms - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/matt-salinger-jd-the-catcher-in-the-rye
======
vichu
I recall reading some of his unpublished writings after they were leaked on
what.cd, and I'm sure if you dig around some you'd be able to find mirrors
somewhere on the web. Included in the leak was "The Ocean Full of Bowling
Balls", the supposed prequel to "Catcher in the Rye". The leaker claimed
something like a 6TB(!) bounty for leaking it too.

~~~
dewey
The discussion in that request thread about how to get the novel out of the
reading room where one of the most entertaining ones I’ve read. I wish there
was a backup.

People were going crazy with coming up with plans and spy grade equipment to
take pictures. Good times.

~~~
balladeer
There's a backup of the torrents somewhere. Couple of months ago an ex admin
had released it. Like backup of the catalogue but not the items.

~~~
dewey
I was talking about the request thread itself. Forum posts, requests are not
included in the dump.

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dang
We changed the URL from [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/jd-
salingers-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/jd-salingers-
unseen-writings-to-be-published-family-confirms) to the much more interesting
interview with the son.

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ryanmcbride
This gives me the same feeling as all these old Prince recordings from his
vault coming out. On one hand it feels wrong on the part of the family/rights
owners to release this stuff against the wishes of the deceased, but on the
other hand I really want that forbidden media.

~~~
telesilla
A few posthumous items are coming out lately and the same comment keeps coming
up: it's ok to have conflicting feelings.

We can acknowledge we'd like to respect the artist's wishes and yet, they are
gone—and I think it's ok to delve into their hidden lives, as long as no-one
living is going to be put to shame.

~~~
imglorp
Another unworkable posthumous wish was Albert Barnes, who was a patron of many
impressionist painters around the turn of the last century: Renoir, Matisse,
Degas, etc.

He bought thousands of famous works and arranged them to his taste, tightly
packed on the walls in a tiny building in Merion, PA, USA. The good news is
the foundation could bring out now priceless masterworks on easels to compare
close up for art classes--my grandmother attended one--a rare opportunity
anywhere, and anyone could tour for free.

The bad news was his will stipulated the works needed to stay as he arranged
them, in that building, where there was only room to display around a tenth of
his collection; the place was cramped, difficult to view the works, difficult
to secure them, and probably a fire hazard for the works and the visitors.

Ultimately, after much debate and lawyering, the collection was moved to a
modern facility down the street from the PMA in Philly. The letter of his will
was overridden, but the intent--clearly public access and education--was
followed.

[https://www.barnesfoundation.org/](https://www.barnesfoundation.org/)

~~~
logfromblammo
An "evil genie" type can find all kinds of loopholes in a wish. I'd
disassemble the building, move the pieces of it inside a larger museum with
better public access, and affix the old walls to "structural remediation",
which is to say that the pieces of the old building would be held up with
steel beams and cables instead of each other. The "storage facility" for the
other 90% of the collection would--entirely coincidentally--be arranged nearly
identically to traditional museum viewing galleries.

Then I'd tilt some of the works askew by a few degrees, just to irritate his
ghost.

The Earth belongs to the living. I would support a new rule against
perpetuities that would limit the control a dead person may exert over their
legacy to no more than 20 years beyond their own death--to include copyrights
and patents.

~~~
function_seven
Wholeheartedly agree. Once you're dead, you're dead. One's last wishes should
definitely be respected to the first degree. That is, whomever you will your
money, possessions, or property to should get those things. There should not
be any strings attached beyond that, to the extent that a living person could
not tie those same strings (or choose later to untie them)

~~~
balladeer
What if I do not want to leave my money to anyone, or part of it?

~~~
function_seven
I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not sure. I imagine it would go to the state? Or you
could specify the most extravagant funeral ever and be laid to rest in a
diamond-encrusted gold coffin.

~~~
logfromblammo
Property without heirs escheats to the state/crown. Wealth buried in your
mausoleum goes to grave robbers, eventually.

You could pull a Goldfinger, and irradiate a bunch of gold bars, or otherwise
render your wealth unvaluable or unspendable, but that just decreases the
wealth supply and makes everything else in the economy a tiny fraction more
valuable.

Even if you bought an extravagant Viking funeral, and burned your grave ship,
and sank all your treasure to the bottom of the ocean, the world still turns
without you. The value of money, goods, and services still depend mostly on
the active participants in the economy. When you destroyed the
representational tokens for the wealth in the economy that you controlled,
their value was immediately redistributed to all the other tokens in
existence, and those with the information about the destroyed tokens can
theoretically earn arbitrage profit by spreading that information around.

The best you can do is to write a program that spends your estate after your
death, give it to your lawyer to compile and execute on the legal mainframe,
and hope no one can hack it before it accomplishes your intended goal.

~~~
function_seven
> _The best you can do is to write a program that spends your estate after
> your death, give it to your lawyer to compile and execute on the legal
> mainframe, and hope no one can hack it before it accomplishes your intended
> goal._

This is way cooler than my gold coffin idea!

Finally, a use for Etherium I can get behind.

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acqq
For anybody who is possibly interested, I suggest trying to read "Hapworth 16,
1924" (the last story he published). To me, after trying (I've found the whole
story)... it's just... not worth the time.

[https://themillions.com/2015/06/hapworth-revisited-on-j-d-
sa...](https://themillions.com/2015/06/hapworth-revisited-on-j-d-salingers-
most-inscrutable-short-story.html)

"One of the most critically derided passages of the story takes up around a
quarter its length and consists entirely of Seymour’s absurd and entirely age
inappropriate list of requested reading material: “the complete works again of
Count Leo Tolstoy […] any thoughtful books on human whirling or spinning
[…and] both the French edition and Mr. Cotton’s wonderful translation of
Montaigne’s essays.”"

caveat lector.

------
twothumbsup
I remember that huge bounty for them on What.cd (RIP) with various discussions
about how to go about getting a copy out of the Princeton library. Good times.
I think the request might've ended up banned to attempt to avoid attracting
more attention to the site after Microsoft COFEE[0] was actually uploaded
there.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evide...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Online_Forensic_Evidence_Extractor)

~~~
bootlooped
Yes, those are the only two things I recall being taken down off what.cd for
being too hot.

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gagarine
Just scan it all and release the archive in the public domain. I feel his soon
is more interested by making $$ from copyright than really giving the archive
to the fans.

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porphyrogene
On one hand it will be great to read more of his work but on the other hand I
will have to read the god awful reviews and overhear my friends discussing
these works at parties. J.D. Salinger is society’s most unflattering mirror.

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p1necone
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JuSfcZrD8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5JuSfcZrD8)

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hart_russell
Some will argue that it goes against everything Salinger would want. e.g. He
doesn't want to be "judged" à la "Catcher in the Rye". However, if he truly
never wanted them to be read, he would have burned them immediately after
being written.

~~~
bloak
Why not take that to its logical conclusion and claim: if he truly never
wanted them to be read, he would never have written them in the first place?

To me it seems credible that a writer might want to hold on to some drafts,
hoping to get round to editing them for publication, but doesn't want them
edited by anyone else or published unedited. The question is, how to achieve
that, seeing as one can't trust one's heirs? There are probably both legal and
technical solutions.

~~~
oh_sigh
He should have put in his will and testament that all unfinished drafts should
be destroyed. I don't believe it is possible to will property to people but
put indefinite restrictions on legal usage of the property. I forget the exact
term, but the restriction was put in place so that you don't get into a
situation where estates are confined to operate in the manner that a long-dead
great-great-great-great grandfather specified in their will, in contravention
of the wishes of the current property owners who may have not even been alive
when the will was written.

~~~
bloak
Perhaps you're thinking of "mortmain", a nice English/French word:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortmain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortmain)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities)

There's also the expression "dead hand", but that may also refer to a Soviet
strategic defence system, which has also been referred to as "hand from
coffin", which is certainly more fun than the official name.

