Salinger secrets remain secret

Rumors of completed, unpublished manuscripts remain rumors; no one is talking. There are still no Salinger e-books or planned film adaptations of his work. One award-winning biographer was rebuffed in an attempt to write an authorized book about the legendary novelist of “The Catcher in the Rye.” Salinger’s longtime literary agent, Phyllis Westberg of Harold Ober Associates, Inc., would not comment on whether the estate had been approached, but said no biography had been authorized and that it was “very unlikely” such a project ever would be. (The would-be biographer asked not to be identified, citing a desire, fitting for all things Salinger, for privacy.)

Salinger died Jan. 27, 2010, at age 91, an international celebrity although few would have recognized him had he appeared on their doorstep; he avoided the media for much of the last 50 years of his life. Besides “The Catcher in the Rye,” he released just three other books: “Nine Stories,” “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters and Seymour.” His last published work, the short story “Hapworth 16, 1924,” came out in The New Yorker in 1965.

Salinger’s widow, Colleen O’Neill, still lives in Cornish, the small New Hampshire town where Salinger moved in the 1950s and where residents honored his wishes to be treated as an ordinary and private citizen. A few weeks after his death, she rose to speak at the annual Town Meeting in Cornish, thanked townspeople for keeping their distance and even for steering astray curiosity seekers looking for the Salinger house.

Nothing has changed since, friends and neighbors say.