The Architecture of Snow (The David Morrell Short Fiction Collection #4)

One of the great literary mysteries of the twentieth century concerns J. D. Salinger. In the mid-1960s, the revered creator of
The Catcher in the Rye
suddenly stopped publishing and withdrew from public life. In David Morrell’s haunting “The Architecture of Snow,” an author similar to Salinger submits a manuscript after a four-decade absence. Why has he abruptly resurfaced? What caused his long-ago disappearance? When editor Tom Neal embarks on a search to a remote New England town, he uncovers the disturbing truth behind a tragic mystery that changes his life in unimaginable ways.

David Morrell is the critically acclaimed author of
First
Blood,
The Brotherhood of the Rose
, and many other bestselling novels. An Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, he is a recipient of three Bram Stoker awards from the Horror Writers Association as well as the Thriller Master Award from the International Thriller Writers organization. His writing book,
The Successful
Novelist, discusses what he has learned in his four decades as an author.

“Morrell, an absolute master, plays by his own rules and leaves you dazzled.”

—Dean Koontz,
New York Times
bestselling author of
77 Shadow Street

“David Morrell is, to me, the finest thriller writer living today, bar none.”

—Steve Berry,
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Columbus Affair

“Everything [David Morrell] writes has a you-are-there quality and that, coupled with his ability to propel characters through a scene, makes reading him like attending a private screening.”

—
Washington Post

“The Architecture of Snow” © copyright 2009 by David Morrell, all rights reserved

Introduction © 2012 by David Morrell, all rights reserved

“The Architecture of Snow” first appeared in
Dark Delicacies III: Haunted
, edited by Del Howison & Jeff Gelb, Running Press, 2009.

Cover art: Asha Hossain Design

#1 in the David Morrell Short Fiction Collection is “They.”

#2 in The David Morrell Short Fiction Collection is “My Name Is Legion.”

#3 in The David Morrell Short Fiction Collection is “The Interrogator.”

Each installment has more than 9,000 words (one tenth of a novel) and includes an introduction.

BY DAVID MORRELL

NOVELS

First Blood
(1972)

Testament
(1975)

Last Reveille
(1979)

The Totem
(1979)

Blood Oath
(1982)

The Brotherhood of the Rose
(1984)

The Fraternity of the Stone
(1985)

Rambo (First Blood Part II)
(1985)

The League of Night and Fog
(1987)

Rambo III
(1988)

The Fifth Profession
(1990)

The Covenant of the Flame
(1991)

Assumed Identity
(1993)

Desperate Measures
(1994)

The Totem (Complete and Unaltered)
(1994)

Extreme Denial
(1996)

Double Image
(1998)

Burnt Sienna
(2000)

Long Lost
(2002)

The Protector
(2003)

Creepers
(2005)

Scavenger
(2007)

The Spy Who Came for Christmas
(2008)

The Shimmer
(2009)

The Naked Edge
(2010)

SHORT FICTION

The Hundred-Year Christmas
(1983)

Black Evening
(1999)

Nightscape
(2004)

ILLUSTRATED FICTION

Captain America: The Chosen
(2007)

NONFICTION

John Barth: An Introduction
(1976)

Fireflies: A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss
(1988)

The Successful Novelist (A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing)
(2008)

EDITED BY

American Fiction, American Myth (Essays by Philip Young)

edited by David Morrell and Sandra Spanier (2000)

Tesseracts Thirteen (Chilling Tales of the Great White North)

edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell (2009)

Thrillers: 100 Must Reads

edited by David Morrell and Hank Wagner (2010)

INTRODUCTION

Few authors had the mystique of J.D. Salinger. In the mid-1960s, having written four much-discussed books, one of which was already being treated as a classic, the revered author of
The Catcher in the Rye
stopped publishing and withdrew from public life.

He never explained why, but a few possibilities come to mind. His final book, a pairing of novellas,
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
and
Seymour: An Introduction,
received mixed critical reactions. Perhaps Salinger’s personality was as fragile as the name of his fictional Glass family implied. Perhaps he decided to stop exposing his work to reviewers and preferred to retreat to a simple life where he listened to “the sound of one hand clapping,” a Zen Buddhist phrase that he favored.

For whatever reason, his walled compound in the remote town of Cornish, New Hampshire, acquired the reputation of a hermit’s lair. Fans who made pilgrimages to the area reported occasional sightings of the lean, aesthetic-looking author, based on a solitary, long-ago book photograph that they had studied. But over the years, these sightings became more rare while the citizens of Cornish closed ranks, refusing to reveal the little information they had about him.

The few reports that surfaced indicate that during the next four decades Salinger wrote obsessively every day and that he had stacks of completed novels in a large safe in his home. In January of 2010, he died at the age of 91. It remains to be seen if those novels will be published. Perhaps they never existed. Perhaps he destroyed them before his death. Perhaps they’re unreadable. Or perhaps they are masterpieces, the publication of which will come as unexpectedly as his withdrawal from public life.

These thoughts intrigued me long before Salinger died. In 2004, as I considered the way publishing had changed since my debut novel,
First Blood
, appeared in 1972, I wondered what Salinger would make of the international conglomerates that now control the book world. Publicity has become as important as editing. Marketing is often more important than content..

How would a modern publisher react, I wondered, if—out of nowhere and after so many years—a new Salinger manuscript arrived on an editor’s desk? I called the author by another name, and the circumstances of his withdrawal are different, but anyone familiar with Salinger will recognize the inspiration for “The Architecture of Snow.”

David Morrell

THE ARCHITECTURE OF SNOW

On the first Monday in October, Samuel Carver, who was 72 and suddenly unemployed, stepped in front of a fast-moving bus. Carver was an editor for Edwin March & Sons, until recently one of the last privately owned publishing houses in New York.

“To describe Carver as an editor is an understatement,” I said in his eulogy. Having indirectly caused his death, March & Sons, now a division of Gladstone International, sent me to represent the company at his funeral. “He was a legend. To find someone with his reputation, you need to go back to the 1920s, to Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. It was Perkins who massaged Hemingway’s ego, helped Fitzgerald recover from hangovers, and realized that the two feet of manuscript Wolfe lugged into his office could be divided into several novels.”

Standing next to Carver’s coffin at the front of a Presbyterian church in lower Manhattan, I counted ten mourners. “Carver followed Perkins’s example,” I went on. “For much of the past five decades, he discovered an amazing number of major authors. He nurtured them through writer’s block and discouraging reviews. He lent them money. He promoted them tirelessly. He made them realize the scope of their creative powers. R. J. Wentworth’s classic about childhood and stolen innocence,
The Sand Castle
. Carol Fabin’s verse novel,
Wagon Mound
. Roger Kilpatrick’s Vietnam War novel,
The Disinherited
. Eventual recipients of Pulitzer Prizes, these were buried in piles of unsolicited manuscripts that Carver loved to search through.”

Ten mourners. Many of the authors Carver had championed were dead. Others had progressed to huge advances at bigger publishers and seemed to have forgotten their debt to him. A few retired editors paid their respects.
Publishers Weekly
sent someone who took a few notes. Carver’s wife had died seven years earlier. The couple hadn’t been able to have children. The church echoed coldly. So much for being a legend.