Unseen JD Salinger stories leaked on to filesharing site
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
But even more surprising is that the eBay UK seller who sold this copy, presumably to the file-sharer, has sold at least two other copies of the same collection over the past 8 months.
Most astonishing of all: each of them sold for ~$100.
That's about the usual naïf price for obviously-fake art on eBay, and I suspect that when it all comes out, we will learn that these are fakes -- phonies, if you will -- rough cuts or early versions, or at best scribed copies out of Texas and Princeton.
Still, I'm surprised that Salinger fans wouldn't pay more for even the most cloudy-provenanced versions of these stories.
But being "the real deal" isn't always simple when you're talking about a print run of a short story collection.
It's not like validating authenticity of a painting, where the criteria (generally) involve being executed by the hand of the artist. Authors rarely print their own stuff anyway.
But if the author never intended the stories for collection together, or licensed them to a publisher at all...that can make the collection a "fake" even if the stories are perfect matches for the author's finished versions.
Somewhere along the line between drafts and manuscripts and galleys and first run publishing, the collection becomes real.
Salinger scholars and fans knew the stories existed, and knew where to go to read them, but no one seems to have known of a 25-copy print run of these three as a collection. This is surprising, bordering on incredible, given Salinger's prominence.
On the site where these were uploaded (whatCD), users can post torrent requests. These stories were some of the most requested items on the site, and they had huge ratio bounties.
So when this torrent was uploaded it attracted tons of (unwanted) attention -- the admins panicked and temporarily took the site offline. After thinking it over, they decided to remove the torrent from the site, which didn't actually do much since the file had already made its way onto thousands of other sites.
If I remember correctly, a similar thing happened with a lost Godspeed You! Black Emperor album a couple months ago.
The story so far. Corrections welcome -- just add them.
Three short stories by J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) were to remain unpublished until 2060, but were released onto the Internet late 27Nov2013 and removed early the next day (Thanksgiving morning in the USA).
TWO LIVES
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) enjoyed his personal creativity better if he published less because he felt the presence of a public following -- not to mention reviewers and critics -- was a constraint on his freedom. Salinger stopped publishing and instructed his estate to release his works piecemeal over many decades, as if his life as a famous author would only begin after his life as a private person had ended.
Manuscripts to be kept unpublished could be viewed by scholars (any eager person) in libraries. The libraries had typescripts of the three stories here, annotated in margins by Salinger, but not in final form. Why that kind of release? Because it was society's hubbub over artists that Salinger found constraining, not the world of the mind.
STORIES IN LIBRARIES The three short stories now released that were available in libraries:
--"Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" (typescript; important precursor to "Catcher in in the Rye") --"Paula" (early draft typed by Salinger, his notations in margins) --"Birthday Boy (1946; early draft typed by Salinger, his notations in margins)
The drafts could be read by scholars under supervision, the first at Princeton, and the other two at the University of Texas at Austin's Ransom Center. UT/Austin permitted scholars to make photocopies they were pledged not to circulate, as did Princeton until the mid-1980s.
The Internet leak did not come from either library, but . . .
25 BOOKS IN LONDON
The three stories were published as a little paperback in London, 1999, in a limited edition of 25 numbered copies, each of which declared that this presumably unauthorized act did not constitute publication of the works. The origin of this private publication is unknown. Old photocopies of the library typescripts is a possible source, or perhaps Salinger himself had a publisher review the manuscripts before ceasing all publication a few years later.
THREE BOOKS ON EBAY
A British bookseller specializing in Salinger sold three of the 25 London books, the first on 17Nov2012. Prices ranged up to 65.50 pounds sterling plus shipping (ca $110). http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&ft...
The sales attracted no apparent attention from either eBay or the estate of J.D. Salinger.
ON THE INTERNET
The third book sold on eBay was scanned and pdfs of the page images were uploaded to what.cd. Site administrators removed the copy after being contacted by lawyers for the estate of J.D. Salinger. However, other sites began to carry copies (search Salinger Three Stories download).
Scholars say the book is faithful to the manuscripts they saw in libraries.
BOUNTY
The uploader dtauris will keep the bounty.
A what.cd member requested the community at large to provide a copy of some Salinger short stories (not exactly these three, but these three became acceptable). That was five years ago, about a year after what.cd was launched. The autonomous request system permits other members to show their approval of any request by donating part of their upload credits, creating a community-funded bounty. The bounty for the 84.49MB Three Stories file grew to over 6 terabytes, the largest in site history.
In 2002, Robert Reid (listen.com, Rhapsody) claimed the "active catalog" of all 5 major record company labels was 25,000 CDs (Gilder Technology Report 2/2002), so a 6TB bounty can download every CD in print 2 1/2 times over with V0/VBR encoding (100MB/CD; some are 60MB), and nearly the whole catalog in flac.
What now? "Download all of What.CD just in case [we go off the air]. We will need you for a backup," user Alcahofa advised: forums.php?action=viewthread&threadid=185074&postid=5029235#post5029235
What.cd has a collage of "1 TB Bounty Fills"; about 20 entries are listed. Twenty-six requests for at least 1/2 TB are currently pending (user tpchuckles, 401-500 block).
CENSORSHIP AND COMMUNITY
Only two items have ever been removed from what.cd: Microsoft's COFEE forensic software (see SoldierX) and Salinger's Three Stories.
Letting a member keep a bounty after the desired item has been removed from the community seems unfair to the community. There is a local contradiction between donating a bounty here, and not getting the item here ("the local contradiction"). But in a larger sense, the global community now has "Three Stories". So the uploader gifted our community, and our community -- your bounty -- has gifted all of humanity.
Solving the "local contradiction" by removing a request before it is filled has problems.
1. The removal staff is forced to practice self-censorship.
2. The self-censorship must proceed without any data about world reaction. Here, there was no apparent reaction to three sales of the forbidden material on eBay, but there has been world reaction (search Salinger leaked) to the same material on Internet file-sharing sites. To get "the perspective granted by fallout", one must post the material.
3. Removing requests forces staff to take responsibility for an autonomous requests program available to users.
4. Staff complicity in an act of deception could hide a torrent's origins. Let staff hold the high-bounty upload in escrow, while the uploader makes it go public with an upload elsewhere first. What.cd admins would then release their duplicate (escrowed) copy to our community. If you don't appear to be first, you don't appear to be guilty. Technology, score one; legality and morality, zero. At trial and sentencing, you have handed the moral high ground to opponents.
The two removal decisions (DECAFF, Salinger) have been based upon unwanted general publicity (10 pages of hits 1 day later to "Salinger leaked online") as well as upon legal pressure. Legal pressure depends on focus as well as resources: compared to the RIAA, the Salinger estate could focus on a single adversary.
The site was taken off line until early Thursday morning (5 to 8 AM EST) in part to avoid the steadily building "curiosity" traffic.
Site administrators stated their first priority is preservation of the site, and thus preservation of the community. what.cd was founded the day that an earlier site was forcible shuttered (Wikipedia what.cd). The beginning-of-the-end for the earlier site may have been an e-book posting (user Binjo).
Members who asked for stronger resistance did not mention financial contributions to legal costs. The existential seriousness of the moment is apparent in the comments of Administrator Irimias (201-300 block).
USER ANXIETY
Some users (cocabottle) want a commemorative T-shirt. Others are more anxious. If an ebook incident brought anxiety, some some users suggest banning ebooks. If a high-bounty request brought grief, some users suggest self-censorship of requests with high bounties. User sav0y suggests Cafe Del Mar (ambient, electronic, downtempo, future.jazz); others rushed to download anything. Suspending interview-based invites might be prudent.
Big practical and political differences between us (quiet invites) and The Pirate Bay (in-your-face politics) were summarized by mediaferret (401-500 block).
SOLID LEADERSHIP
Users praising Administrators conveniently forgot about the threatened return of Drone.
The [Manchester] Guardian quoted Administrator DixieFlatline: "Due to this case's rare and unlikely circumstances, due to the unnecessary and unwanted attention the Salinger leak has brought, and due to our desire to comply with the desires of the Salinger estate or other involved parties in this matter, the content has been removed … It is not to be re-uploaded under any circumstances, and anyone found doing so will have their account disabled." Concluded the Guardian, "Salinger could hardly have put it better."
User Snowflake (301-400 block) noted: The Guardian confirms what we already knew, Dixie's announcement writing skills are on par with Salinger's work.
"Strong leaders" for the site and "weak--zero?-- democracy" were linked in comments that did not also mention the vast amount of work done by members to produce the text, files and metadata here, or the fact that most staff are unpaid volunteers, or the many opportunities--this thread, for example--for users to express themselves, make suggestions, and provide the effort to carry them out.
LITERARY AGENTS AND ESTATES
User AGuyCalledMike reminds us how bad it can get with a grandson of James Joyce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_James_Joyce
Then there is Andrew Wylie:
" If I have to read James Michener, Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, I’m toast. Fuck it. This is not about making money. I know where the money is. It’s on Wall Street. I’m not going to sit around reading this drivel in order to get paid less than a clerk at Barclays. That’s just stupid. ... I want to be interested in what I read, ..."
His living clients Martin Amis Al Gore Philip Roth Salman Rushdie Dixie Flatline?
The dead clients, he handles their estates Saul Bellow Jorge Luis Borges Norman Mailer Vladimir Nabokov John Updike Evelyn Waugh
Get luck with one book.
Milk it.
Leave other books to be published 50yrs after death.
That covers both the IP law (50yrs from author death for his previously, milked novel) and the book market desire for posthumous works.
That's the best investment he could have left for his state.
... we're it not for the imminent death of publishing