Filmmaker has never-before-seen photo of the reclusive author.
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In April of 1968, the stamped date of the never-before-seen photograph above, J. D. Salinger would have been 49 years old. He was recently divorced, and three years into the seclusion that would span the last 45 years of his life. He has bags under his eyes and grooves in his face but, ever so faintly, he is smiling. The intimacy of his setting--the milky tangle of used blankets and sheets--is offset by the spare thrift of his Cornish, N.H., bedroom, with its humble furnishings: small wastebasket, austere dresser. Bare, blank walls. Pack of smokes. But the most telling detail is on the door, at the left edge: a flash-enhanced glint on the room's steely lock. It's a reminder of its tenant's unflinching mantra: keep out.
But that lock didn't just keep busybodies at bay. Reader, it guarded something else. Because in a small nook across that ascetic cell of a bedroom, Salinger kept a safe. A packed safe, a safe filled with piles and heaps of unpublished...
Call it a coming attraction, because to know any more, you'll have to wait until Shane Salerno is good and ready to tell you. Salerno, a Hollywood screen-writer (Shaft), has spent six years and millions of dollars researching the author's mysterious world--though the details, such as the story behind this photo, he won't divulge just yet. Like Franny Glass, who clung to her copy of The Way of a Pilgrim as a kind of dog-eared talisman, Salerno has a spiritual relationship with Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. He also has rules. "Do not read J. D. Salinger on a Kindle," he says, with a snort of disgust. "Grab that broken paperback."
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