Three unpublished short stories, that were previously only available to read at academic institutions, have been leaked online this week and have shown up on websites such as Imgur and MediaFire.
The late writer, J.D. Salinger, who died in 2010 at the age of 91, was always very protective of his work, and never published the three short stories that have now been popping up on the internet. The 41-page album is named Three Stories and contains The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls , Birthday Boy , and Paula.
It is believed that the source of the leak was from an eBay auction that sold an unauthorized copy of Salinger’s original stories. The copy sold for $110 back in September, and just showed up on the internet this week.
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Are these the actual works of Salinger? Los Angeles book critic, David L. Ulin, says they are. “I’ve never read The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls: It’s part of a collection of Salinger material at the Princeton University library and available only to scholars who are supervised as they read,” Ulin said. “I have read the other two stories, however, at the University of Texas’ Ransom Center, and the versions of them in Three Stories are the real deal.”
Salinger scholar Kenneth Slawenski, the author ofJ.D. Salinger: A Life, believes Three Stories to be identical to the originals as well. “While I do quibble with the ethics or lack of ethics in posting the Salinger stories, they look to be true transcripts of the originals and match my own copies,” Slawenski told BuzzFeed.
Image via Biography.com and Imgur.com