JD Salinger is dead. What next?

Today is going to be the first day of what could be a very interesting couple of months (years?). JD Salinger has reportedly passed. He was a weird guy, most famously for living a reclusive life in New Hampshire after writing what has basically become known as The Great American Novel. In the short term, we'll have the obits to keep us occupied. The first couple I have seen are here and here.

However, the real intrigue relates to whether new works of his will now be published. Salinger last published in 1965 but his friends have long maintained that he had more than a dozen finished manuscripts in his house. If these texts do exist, the question is whether they will be destroyed or published. In reality, these are the only two options because when an author leaves behind unpublished works with instructions to keep them private, the descendants always end up publishing at some point to make some money (see this fascinating NY Times Magazine article on Jung's unpublished "Red Book," for a good example of how this tends to play out).

Alright, enough highbrow. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming of people being hit in the crotch by flying objects.

UPDATE: It's a safe bet that The Catcher In The Rye and possibly Franny and Zooey will be making appearances in upcoming bestseller lists.

UPDATE UPDATE: The New Yorker, which published Salinger's short stories, has made all of his short stories available on their website here. If you have to read just one, read A Perfect Day for Bananafish.