Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Will Salinger's Secrets Come Out?

David Wagner reports that a new documentary is coming out:
The word "recluse" precedes the name of late author J.D. Salinger so often, you'd think it was his job description. "Hermit" is another popular descriptor for the intensely private creator of The Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield. Some writers bust out "isolato" when they're feeling fancy. In short, three years after his death (and almost a half century after he published his last piece of fiction), many mysteries still cling to the reputation of one of American literature's most famous figures.
Some of them could be demystified soon. Yesterday, Deadline reported that filmmaker Shane Salerno has completed Salinger, a documentary eight years in the making that's being touted as "an unprecedented look into the mysterious life of the author of The Catcher In the Rye." Salerno had finished the film as early as 2009, but shelved the project in order to conduct more revealing interviews after Salinger's death in 2010 at the age of 91. "There were people who’ve been quiet 40 or 50 years, some of whom didn’t want to disappoint him," Salerno tells Deadline's Mike Fleming Jr. "After his passing, it became part of some cathartic release they needed after being quiet so long."
Salinger will air on PBS' American Masters in January 2014, and today Simon & Schuster announced that a biography co-written by Salerno will reach shelves in September 2013. Publisher Jonathan Karp promises that the book will also shed light on previously unknown aspects of Salinger's life, saying in a press release: "Many of us who read The Catcher in the Rye have, at some point in our lives, wished we could know the author better. Now, we finally can."
Wagner offers a number of questions which we may or may not have answered.  I would like to find out what the fascination with the Glass family was about, especially Seymour Glass.  Those stories are just so odd, and to write so many different stories about them seems puzzling.


No comments:

Post a Comment