that reclusive, salacious Salinger!

It makes me smile to read these few rare quotes from JD Salinger;

"Give me two hours in the dentist chair before I’ll spend another minute in a publisher’s office. All those insufferable literary types, thoroughly pleased with themselves, who haven’t read a line of Tolstoy since college."

or this one; “They (the publishers) offer up all these bright ideas. Unable to produce a single original line themselves, they’re bound and determined to put their stamp squarely on your work . . . Polite suggestions that I change this or that, put in more romance, take out more of that annoying ambiguity . . . slap some terribly clever illustration on the cover . . . forget it."

I hear you loud and clear, JD! Too bad he couldn't have tried print on demand and had the control to publish some of those piles of manuscripts that friends and family are pulling out of his vault. Of course, he's on record telling those closest to him not to publish posthumously, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. What do you think? If there's a Glass family stash, should they be published? In honor of his wishes, I'll find a 1964 maroon Bantam edition of Catcher in the Rye. That's the one he designed once he got the rights to his own book, not the ugly carousel horse cover he hated. The snobs can fight over those first editions. But, for now I'm not into Catcher at all. I'm totally immersed in the "Glass family saga." That's Salinger's collection of seemingly unrelated short stories that are said to have been the inspiration for the movie the Royal Tenenbaums. I'll post a comment below when I'm done. For now, I hope JD and Frank Baum and Phil are having a good laugh out there in the Twilight Zone!