A review of the story in question, for those who are curious:<p><a href="http://www.thesatirist.com/books/HAPWORTH.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.thesatirist.com/books/HAPWORTH.html</a><p>I also tracked down a copy of the full text, but in the interests of some kind of vague respect for copyright I'll leave you to figure out how to obtain it for yourself.
I think this publishing attempt was doomed from the outset. There was no way that the attempt could ever escape notice for long; and any notice made of it would have upset Salinger. At best, Salinger would have felt duped, if contracts etc. had proceeded to the point that publishing could no longer be aborted.
The real problem here is the length of copyright terms, which now stand at pretty much forever. If we had more reasonable laws then anyone who damn well pleased could published it.
Wow. If he had actually finished producing the book it would quickly become a bestseller once someone discovered its existence. I think the old man would have had a chuckle buying the plain-looking book at some small, non-chain bookstore.
While I understand where J D Salinger is coming from, this reminds me of a couple customers that I've dealt with over the years. They come up with some ridiculous request, and you smile and agree because they're the customer and you want the deal, then the whole thing turns out to be a lot more trouble than it's worth.