The allure of Salinger continues with the pirated publication of three unpublished stories that became available online last week. A good deal of mystery sounds them. Salinger had prohibited the publication of "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" until 2060, so getting a glimpse of it now has literary scholars and fans of Salinger leaning forward in their seats.

Salinger fans will find a good deal to interest them in all of these works. "The Ocean full of Bowling Balls" is quite fine, and it would not have seemed out of place next to "A Perfect Day for Bannafish" or "Teddy". The familiar upper-middle class world of Salinger is immediately recognisable. Set on Cape Cod, the story reads like a prequel to The Catcher in the Rye, and at its centre is a letter from nobody less than Holden Caulfield himself. In this tale, Holden is the younger brother of the narrator, Vincent, who includes Holden's charming letter from "Camp Goodrest for slobs". He begins: "This place stinks. I never saw so many rats. You have to make stuff out of lether [sic] and go for hikes. They got a contest between the reds and the whites. I am supposed to be a white. I am no lousy white." It rambles on with a wryness that is pure Holden.

One has to wonder why Salinger changed his mind about the publication of this story, which had been accepted by Harper's Bazaar. It's a vivid piece of writing focused on the last day in the life of Vincent's brother, Kenneth – who becomes Allie in Catcher. Kenneth is a lover of baseball who gives up on the sport after his hero, Lou Gehrig, strikes out. He loves writing and literature, and there is a good deal of interesting chitchat about Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James, among other writers.

As it happens, Vincent has written a story himself, the one featured in the title. It's about a man who is repressed by his wife and only allowed to go bowling once a week. When he dies, his wife discovers that somebody else has been putting flowers on her husband's grave. Enraged, she throws his bowling ball out of the window. The dragon wife and the infantilised husband seem to obsess Salinger here, and it's not atypical of writing in the immediate postwar era, when men who had been at war came home only to find themselves no longer enjoying a boyish freedom.

In fact, this is a covert war story. Vincent tells this story to get rid of his brother, who died young, but he can't. The last sentences cut to the heart: "Maybe setting all this down will get him out of here. He's been in Italy with Holden, and he's been in France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and part of Germany with me. I can't stand it. He shouldn't be sticking around these days." In other words, the memory of the dead brother lingers in his other brothers, who have taken their memory onto the field of battle in Europe, where Salinger himself had served.

The war had a scarring effect on Salinger, and it's always best to read his fiction in the light of this experience. He was trying to cleanse himself. His work was one of expiation.

The other two stories here, "Birthday Boy" and "Paula", are clearly unfinished pieces. They are interesting to read, if only because they give us a sense of the writer's process. "Birthday Boy" concerns a young man in what is perhaps a rehab center. Ray lies in a bed with his "light brown hair neatly combed, as though by a mother, and his polka-dot robe … drawn close to his almost beardless throat". In other words, he is infantilised. It's the story of a young man on the verge of madness, but Salinger was clearly casting about for a storyline, and he never quite found one.

"Paula" is another castaway. It's about a young couple, Mr and Mrs Hincher. Mrs Hincher thinks she is pregnant, and asks her husband to let her lie in bed throughout her pregnancy. She explains why: "I want to. Are you furious with me? You are. I can tell. I see that severe look coming on your face." As it happens, she seems not actually to be pregnant. The last paragraphs are really not part of the story but notes towards what might happen, should the author continue writing: "Paula returned to Otisville and several months later resumed her work as a librarian. She still there today doing a brilliant job of it."

These stories – especially the latter ones – are obviously drafts, with misspellings and odd syntactical lapses, which may or may not be a fault of the transcription. "Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" is fascinating work, and Salinger fans will not have to wait until 2060 to read it. The others will interest only scholars. Whether or not these stories should have seen the light of day – given Salinger's directions not to publish – is another matter.

• This article was amended on December 3 2013 to make clear that the writer of the story in The Ocean full of Bowling Balls is Vincent