On J. D. Salinger’s “Hapworth 16, 1924”

WHEN I WAS 16, I stumbled to the giant glass public library in Downtown Indianapolis; the only way to read J. D. Salinger’s short story “Hapworth 16, 1924” was on microfiche. I forced my friend, who perhaps had a crush on me, to come along. We located the New Yorker copy from 1965 and found that the story takes up almost the entire magazine. It certainly could be its own novella—but Salinger never republished “Hapworth” in book form. Allegedly, it was publishers who fumbled the bag, and the reclusive and difficult author decided against reprinting his last work. Salinger didn’t publish anything for the rest of his life; he died in 2010.