Re: An About Town Republican


Subject: Re: An About Town Republican
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2000 - 12:14:57 EST


Tim wrote:

> Given that the bulk of what
>Little, Brown published was previously "vetted" via publication in
>magazines, it seems to me that they essentially acted as reprinters
>for all but Catcher. If one had online copies of the magazine
>appearances and the book appearances, it would be illuminating to see
>if there were any fine differences between the way the stories
>appeared in magazines and the way they were printed in hardcover.
>(Not counting typos, which are not particularly interesting when
>reading for textual changes.)
>

Yes. And I would guess any changes between New Yorker Glass Stories and
those in Little, Brown would be JDS himself doing a bit of polishing. (If
my dull memory serves, some enterprising lit crit person once did a paper on
the differences between the magazine appearances of the _9 Stories_ and how
they appeared in book form.) Will, can you help here?

>> I wholly agree with this. It's just how much editing did go on after say
>> '50?
>
>I guess we won't know until ... well, until something else pokes its
>head up in print. If that ever happens. Part of me (the wishful
>part) rationalizes that you don't build a room-size safe to hold
>manuscripts that you intend to burn or have burned upon your death.
>So, the wishful part of me continues to hope that one day all that
>work will see print. I can't fathom why a writer would so
>elaborately safeguard his work if he didn't intend to have it see
>daylight, eventually.
>

The not wanting/willing to let go of the manuscripts to the public, the
what-after-death question of publication--all of a sudden the ghost of Franz
Kafka stopped by.

>
>>>Where there is a passage of substance, it
>>>either shows that the fiction department didn't want to publish
>>>certain stories, or it offers a summary of Salinger's career that is
>>>definitely closed-out, as if he were dead and had no further work
>>>extant.
>>
>> God, the end of your sentence, beginning with 'Salinger's career', reads
>> eerily at this moment.
>
>I'm not sure I get it; in what way? (Your remark sent me nervously
>scurrying to the New York Times online to see if there was some
>newsbreak I should see.)
>

I just meant what IF 1965 was the real end ("as if he were dead"--The
Writer, that is); that Seymour's glimpse in_Hapworth_ of Buddy's eventual
release from it all was true ("career that is definitely closed-out"); that
there really isn't anything beyond scenes, notes, lists, doodles ("no
further work extant") in that room-size safe.

Of course I want all of this to be a bad dream and that a Max Brod exists
for JDS's _hopefully_ copious unpublished fully wrought works.

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