J. D. Salinger - Last Publications and Maynard Relationship

Last Publications and Maynard Relationship

Salinger published Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction in 1963. Each book contained two short stories or novellas, previously published in The New Yorker, about members of the Glass family. These four stories were originally published between 1955 and 1959, and were the only ones Salinger had published since Nine Stories. On the dust jacket of Franny and Zooey, Salinger wrote, in reference to his interest in privacy: "It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years."

On September 15, 1961, Time magazine devoted its cover to Salinger. In an article that profiled his "life of recluse", the magazine reported that the Glass family series "is nowhere near completion ... Salinger intends to write a Glass trilogy." However, Salinger published only one other story after that: "Hapworth 16, 1924", a novella in the form of a long letter from seven-year-old Seymour Glass while at summer camp. His first new work in six years, the novella took up most of the June 19, 1965, issue of The New Yorker, and was universally critically panned. Around this time, Salinger had isolated Claire from friends and relatives and made her—in the words of Margaret Salinger—"a virtual prisoner." Claire separated from him in September 1966; their divorce was finalized on October 3, 1967.

In 1972, at the age of 53, Salinger had a relationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard that lasted for nine months. Maynard, at this time, was already an experienced writer for Seventeen magazine. The New York Times had asked Maynard to write an article for them which, when published as "An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back On Life" on April 23, 1972, made her a celebrity. Salinger wrote a letter to her warning about living with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salinger the summer after her freshman year at Yale University. Maynard did not return to Yale that fall, and spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's Cornish home. The relationship ended, he told his daughter Margaret at a family outing, because Maynard wanted children, and he felt he was too old. However, in her own autobiography, Maynard paints a different picture, saying Salinger abruptly ended the relationship and refused to take her back. She had dropped out of Yale to be with him, even forgoing a scholarship. Maynard later writes in her own memoir how she came to find out that Salinger had begun relationships with young women by exchanging letters. One of those letter recipients included Salinger's last wife, a nurse who was already engaged to be married to someone else when she met the author.

While he was living with Maynard, Salinger continued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning. According to Maynard, by 1972 he had completed two new novels. In a rare 1974 interview with The New York Times, he explained: "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure." According to Maynard, he saw publication as "a damned interruption." In her memoir, Margaret Salinger describes the detailed filing system her father had for his unpublished manuscripts: "A red mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this 'as is,' blue meant publish but edit first, and so on." A neighbor said that Salinger told him that he had written 15 unpublished novels.

Salinger's final interview was in June, 1980, with Betty Eppes of The Baton Rouge Advocate. Eppes was an attractive young woman who misrepresented herself as an aspiring novelist, and managed to record audio of the interview as well as take several photographs of Salinger, both without his knowledge or consent. The interview ended "disastrously" when a local passer-by from Cornish attempted to shake the famous author's hand, at which point Salinger became enraged. A sordid account of the interview was later published by Eppes in The Paris Review.