I scored the publishing coup of the decade..and then I blew it.

Ed here: This was published in New York magazine..

Betraying Salinger
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By Roger Lathbury Published Apr 4, 2010


The first letter I got from J.D. Salinger was very short. It was 1988, and I had written to him with a proposal: I wanted my tiny publishing house, Orchises Press, to publish his novella Hapworth 16, 1924. And Salinger himself had improbably replied, saying that he would consider it.

Hapworth is Salinger's great mystical not-quite-lost work. It takes the form of a digressive 26,000-word ...