Documentary to say five new J.D. Salinger books are coming

The American Masters documentary "Salinger" to be released next month, and its accompanying book, "include detailed assertions that Mr. Salinger instructed his estate to publish at least five additional books — some of them entirely new, some extending past work — in a sequence that he intended to begin as early as 2015," the New York Times says in a story out of the LA bureau. Salinger's son and widow had no comment. The film by Shane Salerno will be distributed by the Weinstein Company starting Sept. 6 and air later on PBS as the 200th episode of "American Masters." It includes interviews with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Martin Sheen, Tom Wolfe, E.L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal, A. Scott Berg and Elizabeth Frank, among others.

The NYT story offers some detail:

The new books and stories were largely written before Mr. Salinger assigned his output to a trust in 2008, and would greatly expand the Salinger legacy.

One collection, to be called “The Family Glass,” would add five new stories to an assembly of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family, which figured in Mr. Salinger’s “Franny and Zooey” and elsewhere, according to the claims, which surfaced in interviews and previews of the documentary and book last week.

Another would include a retooled version of a publicly known but unpublished tale, “The Last and Best of the Peter Pans,” which is to be collected with new stories and existing work about the fictional Caulfields, including “Catcher in the Rye.” The new works are said to include a story-filled “manual” of the Vedanta religious philosophy, with which Mr. Salinger was deeply involved; a novel set during World War II and based on his first marriage; and a novella modeled on his own war experiences.

For decades, those in touch with Mr. Salinger have said that he had continued to write assiduously, though he stopped publishing after a long story, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” appeared in The New Yorker. But no one had made so detailed a public claim that Mr. Salinger had left extensive posthumous publishing plans.

Here's the trailer. Salinger died in 2010 at age 91.

Screen grab from the trailer