Holden Caulfield stays mum for now

Did J.D. Salinger write a novel - or 10 - to rival "The Catcher in the Rye"?

We may never know.

Though there's much speculation about the unpublished writings of one of the most-talked about novelists of our time, time will tell if his family will release them - if indeed any writings exist.

The reclusive Salinger, who died on Jan. 27 at the age of 91 in New Hampshire, remains an enigma. The mass adoration of his 1945 classic caused him to run for cover.

I admit, I would salivate to see more of Salinger's shorter works. At least he did see fit to publish "Franny and Zooey," "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters," and "Nine Stories," the collection that contains two of my fave stories "For Esme with Love and Squalor," and "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish."

And yes, a "new" novel would be a dream come true. Too bad the guy had to die before we could see it (possibly).

Below, The Assocated Press asks the question that's foremost on the fan's minds.

"What’s in J.D. Salinger’s safe?"

By the Associated Press (1/29/10)

NEW YORK — So what about the safe?

The death this week of J.D. Salinger ends one of literature’s most mysterious lives and intensifies one of its greatest mysteries: Was the author of "The Catcher in the Rye" keeping a stack of finished, unpublished manuscripts in a safe in his house in Cornish, New Hampshire? Are they masterpieces, curiosities or random scribbles?

And if there are publishable works, will the author’s estate release them?

The Salinger camp isn’t talking.

No comment, says his literary representative, Phyllis Westberg, of Harold Ober Associates Inc.

No plans for any new Salinger books, reports his publisher, Little, Brown & Co.

Marcia B. Paul, an attorney for Salinger when the author sued last year to stop publication of a "Catcher" sequel, would not get on the phone Thursday.

Salinger’s son, Matt Salinger, referred questions about the safe to Westberg.

Stories about a possible Salinger trove have been around for a long time. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor Jerry Burt said the author had told him years earlier that he had written at least 15 unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home. A year earlier, author and former Salinger girlfriend Joyce Maynard had written that Salinger used to write daily and had at least two novels stored away.

Salinger, who died Wednesday at age 91, began publishing short stories in the 1940s and became a sensation in the 1950s after the release of "Catcher," a novel that helped drive the already wary author into near-total seclusion. His last book, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour," came out in 1963 and his last published work of any kind, the short story "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker in 1965.

Jay McInerney, a young star in the 1980s thanks to the novel "Bright Lights, Big City," is not a fan of Hapworth and is skeptical about the contents of the safe.

"I think there’s probably a lot in there, but I’m not sure if it’s necessarily what we hope it is," McInerney said Thursday. "’Hapworth’ was not a traditional or terribly satisfying work of fiction. It was an insane epistolary monologue, virtually shapeless and formless. I have a feeling that his later work is in that vein."

Author-editor Gordon Lish, who in the 1970s wrote an anonymous story that convinced some readers it was a Salinger original, said he was "certain" that good work was locked up in New Hampshire.

Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld, frequently compared to Salinger because of her novel "Prep," was simply enjoying the adventure.
"I can’t wait to find out!" she said. "In our age of shameless self-promotion, it’s extraordinary, and kind of great, to think of someone really and truly writing for writing’s sake."

Some of the great works of literature have been published after the author’s death, and even against the author’s will, including such Franz Kafka novels as "The Trial" and "The Castle," which Kafka had requested be destroyed.

Because so little is known about what Salinger was doing, it’s so easy to guess. McInernay said he has an old girlfriend who met Salinger and was told that the author was mostly writing about health and nutrition. Lish said Salinger told him back in the 1960s that he was still writing about the Glass family, featured in much of Salinger’s work.

But the Salinger papers might exist only in our dreams, like the second volume of Nikolai Gogol’s "Dead Souls," which the Russian author burned near the end of his life. The Salinger safe also could turn into a version of Henry James’ novella "The Aspern Papers," in which the narrator’s pursuit of a late poet’s letters ends with his being told that they were destroyed.

Margaret Salinger, the author’s daughter, wrote in a memoir published in 2000 that J.D. Salinger had a precise filing system for his papers: A red mark meant the book could be released "as is," should the author die. A blue mark meant that the manuscript had to be edited.

"There is a marvelous peace in not publishing," J.D. Salinger told The New York Times in 1974. "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."

What're the odds?

I guess it's close enough to Groundhog Day for a little Deja Vu.

Just a couple of weeks ago I reviewed "That Old Cape Magic," by Richard Russo, about a guy named Griffin who's having some marital problems. Shortly thereafter, a novel called "Say When," by Elizabeth Berg was recommended to me by a coworker. It's about a guy named Griffin who's having some marital problems.

What're the odds?

While I did enjoy Berg's writing style, and I give her props for writing from the male point of view for the first time, I will admit was annoyed when I picked up the book. "Ugh. Another divorce story ... Fantastic." I almost said "when" right then.

But I wanted to read the book. My friend Pat who gave it to me has exquisite taste in so many things. I wanted to see what she liked about this novel.

The protagonist, Frank Griffin, is a guy who's pretty content with his life. His wife is his best friend, and together they have a precocious 8-year-old daughter named Zoe, a comfortable home.

So when his stay-at-home-wife, Ellen, tells him she's having an affair, Griffin's world is pretty well rocked. Ellen, who was Griffin's college sweetheart, doesn't want to leave the house or Zoe, but after discovering Griffin's not about to leave (he is, after all, the wronged party), she moves out and continues her affair with her lover, and asks him for a divorce.

But she's not completely out of the picture. She and Griffin alternate nights at the family home with Zoe after school.

Meanwhile, Griffin struggles to come to terms with the end of his marriage. Is it worth saving? Staying strong for his daughter keeps him from entirely losing it. He and Ellen proceed to have a lot of painful and bitter fights.

Griffin keeps himself busy with a seasonal job playing Santa at the local mall, and taking the beautiful and too-understanding (divorced herself) Santa photographer out on a couple of dates.

Griffin starts to learn about himself and to take responsibility for his role in the problems with his relationship with Ellen. His personal growth and change is the interesting part of the novel for me. The acrimony and petty insults that surround the dissolving marriage, not so much. I admire him for his attempts to get Ellen back, even when it seems there's no hope left.

In the end, "Say When" was a worthwhile read. The characters, their dialogues and relationships are real. I got over my annoyance with the subject matter and finished the book just to find out what happened. When you want to know what becomes of the character, that's when I think you're invested.

Incidentally, I read that Elizabeth Berg - a former nurse - writes only one novel a year (I don't know if that's true), and that she has quite a following who wait for that yearly tome. Thus far she's published 10 novels, including New York Times bestsellers "Never Change" and "Open House," which was an Oprah's Book Club selection in 2000.

You'll want to be privy to these private lives

When I finish a good book - one that takes me out of my life, away from the droning of a plane's engine, a cold doctor's office, a mediocre day, and into a story - I go through a little mourning period. Now I have to find another book, and will it be as good?

That's how I felt after finishing Rebecca Miller's "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," (2008, Canongate Books, 231 pp.).

I devoured this book in a couple of sittings. I didn't know when I was reading the novel that it was Miller's first (she is the author of a book of stories, "Personal Velocity," and director of movies, "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," the film version of this novel), or that she is the daughter of famed playwright Arthur Miller and photographer Inge Morath, and wife of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.

When the novel begins, we are introduced to Pippa Lee, a 50-year-old woman, married to an 80-year-old publishing mogul Herb Lee. Pippa is serene, loving, an accomplished cook and devoted wife. Herb's third wife, that is, but the one who is in it for the long haul - she's the one Herb calls his "true wife."

The couple, parents of two grown and successful twins, have just sold their Gramercy Park and Long Island properties and belongings and moved into Marigold Village, a retirement community where the plan is for Herb to transition into old age and Pippa to go along for the ride. Herb's had some heart problems, and he's supposed to take it easy now. But he still works constantly from his new "retirement" home.

But Pippa, known as one of the community's "young ones," is restless in "Wrinkle Village." She begins to fall into old, bad habits. We are given a glimpse of Pippa as a child, a teen, a young woman. The novel shifts from the third person (the present day) to the first person (the past). Young Pippa's actions fall more on the bad-ass side than you'd expect. Illicit affairs at 16, visits to sex clubs not long after, a latent addiction to uppers.

So when we return to to the present day, it's not such a shock to find Pippa drawn to the much-younger son of a retirement-community neighbor. Or Herb involved in a personal crisis of his own. But the tale's conclusion is not the ending we imagine when we first meet Pippa at her own dinner party, receiving compliments on her butterflied lamb, laughing about being relegated to a retirement community while still quite young and vibrant.

I won't spoil it further by telling you.

If, as the adage goes, we are the sum of our experiences, then Pippa the party-girl turned-housewife is the sum of hers. And following those experiences is an interesting ride.

"I don’t have all the answers," Miller said in a November interview with The Associated Press. "It’s more that I’m bringing up all sorts of questions and incongruities and things that don’t match because that’s what people really are, these anomalies. There are all these qualities that don’t match within people, and that’s what makes people individuals and makes them very difficult to understand and yet also interesting."

I knew, as the paperback book I picked up is graced with the beautiful face of actress Robin Wright Penn, that "Pippa" is now a major motion picture, directed by Miller, of course. It was released in the U.S. around Thanksgiving, and is not yet in any theater that I've heard of (maybe it's not a great film?). Stars include Blake Lively as a young Pippa, Alan Arkin as Herb, and Keanu Reeves as the drifter son of Pippa's neighbor. Also, Julianne Moore, Winona Ryder.

Though the movie is never as good as the book, I'm dying to see it.

At the end of the story, Pippa has a new beginning of sorts, and a new hope. Kinda like I'd like to feel:

"I feel an unfamiliar story unfurling in me. I have no idea how it will go, I don't know who will be in it. I am filled with fear and happiness," she says.

Not enchanted by 'That Old Cape Magic'

When I think about Richard Russo's latest novel, "That Old Cape Magic" (2009, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, 272 pp., $25.95), one word comes to mind - annoying. It fell far from the mark, in my opinon, for the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Empire Falls."

I only started to be less annoyed and actually begin to like the book and its protaganist, Jack Griffin, about two-thirds of the way through. That was when he and his wife separated and Griffin seemed to regain some humility. The pages preceding described ad nauseum Griffin's unhappiness with himself and his marriage.

True to her name, Griffin's wife, Joy, always looks on the bright side of their outwardly successful life, their well-adjusted daughter. Griffin wallows in doom and gloom, haunted by his own parents' seemingly unhappy union. It's as if he can't see the good in his life. His wife, his daughter, his career.

That's where it became tedious for me. Much of the book was about the marital argument. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who can do the most damage to the other without even trying? Ugh.

The novel begins and ends with weddings - one on Cape Cod and the second on the coast of Maine - just a year apart. One dead parent accompanies Griffin via ashes in an urn is his trunk to the first, another to the second.

Cape Cod was the stuff of Griffin's parents dreams. The family would summer there in rental homes, never able to afford to buy a place in their shangri-la. They would spend summers poring over real estate books, putting the properties they surveyed into two groups: "Can't Afford It" and "Wouldn't Have it as a Gift." Their dream was unattainable.

Griffin's parents taught college English and history courses at a midwest college, never quite making it to the bigtime - the Ivy League, and never seeming to have enough money to follow their dream of moving to the Cape fulltime. Their marriage crumbles late in their lives. Following her death, Griffin paints his mother as the unhappy voice in his head. Griffin unwittingly repeats his parents' mistakes in his own life.

More than once, when Griffin was hearing his dead mother's commentary in his head, I was reminded of Norman Bates being haunted by his mother's voice. I found the allusion creepy rather than comic, as the Washington Post's book reviewer seemed to find it: "It's a sign of Russo's comic genius that these two hilariously acerbic parents - one on the phone, the other in an urn - just about steal the show," wrote Ron Charles for the Post.

Like his parents, Griffin ends up a professor. He does them one better by ultimately landing at a private Connecticut college, where he yearns for his days as a screenwriter in LA. By the time this story begins, his 34-year marriage is on the decline, his daughter has grown up and doesn't need him, and he is in the middle of a midlife meltdown. The year-long span of the story details Griffin's experience with that meltdown.

What Russo does best is make us like the regular guy - Jack Griffin (for me, that affection was won after a time) despite his insecurities and his foibles. He also weaves plots, describes relationships (with the dreaded in-laws and siblings), and creates scenes that ring true with poignancy, humor and grace: The elder Griffins' beach rentals; the horrible wedding catastrophy where half the wedding party ends up at the local hospital.

All told, the Russo magic just wasn't in this one for me.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised to see the story on the big screen soon: I can picture the novel, with its two weddings and two funerals, failed and redeemed relationships, and the sometimes cliched Cape reminisences, easily translating to film.