A TINY academic press has secured the rights to print the firsts new book by J.D. Salinger in 34 years, putting between covers at last a little known story by the reclusive author.
Orchises Press, a Virginia based fiction and poetry imprint run by a 51 year old English professor, plans to publish Hapworth 16, 1924 in March.
The story, which takes the form of a precocious letter from a seven yearold boy to his parents, first appeared in the New Yorker Magazine in 1965. Critics have suggested it holds the secret of why the author of Catcher in the Rye, the 1951 classic beloved of teenagers everywhere, stopped writing and withdrew to a hermetic existence in rural New Hampshire.
Its publication is being hailed as the literary coup of the decade because Mr Salinger, aged 78, has doggedly fought any attempts to expose his unpublished work to a wider audience, even appealing to the US Supreme Court to prevent a biographer from using some of his letters.
Prof Roger Lathbury, the George Mason University professor who runs Orchises Press, would not comment on how he persuaded the author to allow the publication.
In keeping with Mr Salinger's violent disaster for publicity and marketing, however, Orchises Press will not release review copies of the story or promote its release.