John Steinbeck in 1939 Born

Last publications and Maynard relationship[edit]

Salinger on the cover of Time (September 15, 1961)

Salinger published Franny and Zooey in 1961, and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction in 1963. Each book contained two short stories or novellas published in The New Yorker between 1955 and 1959, and were the only stories Salinger had published since Nine Stories. On the dust jacket of Franny and Zooey, Salinger wrote, in reference to his interest in privacy: "It is my rather subversive opinion that a writer's feelings of anonymity-obscurity are the second most valuable property on loan to him during his working years."^[93]

On September 15, 1961, Time magazine devoted its cover to Salinger. In an article that profiled his "life of recluse", the magazine reported that the Glass family series "is nowhere near completion ... Salinger intends to write a Glass trilogy."^[2] But Salinger published only one other thing after that: "Hapworth 16, 1924", a novella in the form of a long letter by seven-year-old Seymour Glass to his parents from summer camp. His first new work in six years, the novella took up most of the June 19, 1965, issue of The New Yorker, and was universally panned by critics. Around this time, Salinger had isolated Claire from friends and relatives and made her—in Margaret Salinger's words—"a virtual prisoner."^[87] Claire separated from him in September 1966; their divorce was finalized on October 3, 1967.^[94]

In 1972, at age 53, Salinger had a relationship with 18-year-old Joyce Maynard that lasted for nine months. Maynard was already an experienced writer for Seventeen magazine. The New York Times had asked her to write an article that, when published as "An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back On Life" on April 23, 1972,^[95] made her a celebrity. Salinger wrote her a letter warning about living with fame. After exchanging 25 letters, Maynard moved in with Salinger the summer after her freshman year at Yale University.^[96] Maynard did not return to Yale that fall, and spent ten months as a guest in Salinger's house. The relationship ended, he told Margaret at a family outing, because Maynard wanted children, and he felt he was too old.^[97] In her autobiography, Maynard paints a different picture, saying Salinger abruptly ended the relationship, sent her away and refused to take her back. She had dropped out of Yale to be with him, even forgoing a scholarship. Maynard came to find out that Salinger had begun several relationships with young women by exchanging letters. One of them was his last wife, a nurse who was already engaged to be married to someone else when she met him.^[98]

While he was living with Maynard, Salinger continued to write in a disciplined fashion, a few hours every morning. According to Maynard, by 1972 he had completed two new novels.^[99][100] In a 1974 interview with The New York Times, he said, "There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure."^[101] According to Maynard, he saw publication as "a damned interruption".^[102] In her memoir, Margaret Salinger describes the detailed filing system her father had for his unpublished manuscripts: "A red mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this 'as is,' blue meant publish but edit first, and so on."^[103] A neighbor said that Salinger told him that he had written 15 unpublished novels.^[104]

Salinger's final interview was in June 1980 with Betty Eppes of The Baton Rouge Advocate, which has been represented somewhat differently, depending on the secondary source. By one account, Eppes was an attractive young woman who misrepresented herself as an aspiring novelist, and managed to record audio of the interview as well as take several photographs of Salinger, both without his knowledge or consent.^[105] In a separate account, emphasis is placed on her contact by letter writing from the local post office, and Salinger's personal initiative to cross the bridge to meet Eppes, who during the interview made clear she was a reporter and did, at the close, take pictures of Salinger as he departed. According to the first account, the interview ended "disastrously" when a passerby from Cornish attempted to shake Salinger's hand, at which point Salinger became enraged.^[106] A further account of the interview published in The Paris Review, purportedly by Eppes, has been disowned by her and separately ascribed as a derived work of Review editor George Plimpton.^{[107][108][109][110]}

Salinger was romantically involved with television actress Elaine Joyce for several years in the 1980s.^[96] The relationship ended when he met Colleen O'Neill (b. June 11, 1959), a nurse and quiltmaker, whom he married around 1988.^[111] O'Neill, 40 years his junior, once told Margaret Salinger that she and Salinger were trying to have a child.^[112] They did not succeed.