Thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot details we can’t reveal in our review.
In the past few weeks, The Weinstein Company has sought to quash spoilers about Salinger’s big news, but a New York Times piece pretty much spilled the beans, thus deflating some of the effect of the migraine-inducing climax of Shane Salerno’s documentary.
The biggest news is that several new Salinger works will be published “at irregular intervals” between 2015 and 2020, according to multiple sources: a diary of a World War II counterintelligence officer (which was Salinger’s position after Germany surrendered); a love story about a soldier and a German woman in the shadow of World War II (inspired by Salinger’s short-lived first marriage to a woman with Nazi ties); “a religious manual” pertaining to the Vedanta religion Salinger practiced; a complete history of the Glass family; an official version of the previously unpublished short story “The Last And Best Of The Peter Pans”; and a full telling of Holden Caulfield’s life and family (which is interesting, because Salinger supposedly told someone interviewed for the film that creating Caulfield was a mistake).
Salinger offers further details on each project via onscreen text, and the news of more work from a writer who’s been quiet for five decades is incredible indeed. Too bad Salerno treats it with such bombast—just knowing that new work from J.D. Salinger is on the way is earthshaking enough.