Norman,
Thank you so much for sharing this with all of us.
It certainly provokes a lot of fascinating questions
about an author who touched so many but somehow did
not want to be touched too closely by others.  I wonder
if there really are more of his volumes tucked away and
I also would like to read earlier works mentioned in the
article. Again, I am in the boonies far from home and
it is touching to share the obituary with fellow IPSA
readers.
Marcia Landau
Albuquerque,N.M. (temporarily in AZ)






On Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:33:43 -0500
  Norman Holland <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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> 'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies
> 
> Last updated January 28, 2010 10:12 a.m. PT
> 
> By HILLEL ITALIE
> AP NATIONAL WRITER
> 
> NEW YORK -- J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth 
>hero and fugitive
> from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and 
>inspired a world he
> increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.
> 
> Salinger died of natural causes at his home on 
>Wednesday, the author's son
> said in a statement from Salinger's literary 
>representative. He had lived
> for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, 
>remote house in Cornish,
> N.H.
> 
> "The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage 
>protagonist, the
> twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, 
>a time of anxious,
> Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. 
>The
> Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured 
>selection, advised
> that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the 
>novel will be "a source
> of wonder and delight - and concern."
> 
> Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I 
>go crazy," Holden
> soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero 
>since Huckleberry
>Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing - more than 60 
>million copies
> worldwide - and its impact incalculable. Decades after 
>publication, the book
> remains a defining expression of that most American of 
>dreams - to never
> grow up.
> 
> Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all 
>over identified with
> the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, 
>not to mention the
> luck of having the last word. "Catcher" presents the 
>world as an
> ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young 
>people and the
> corruption of elders, a message that only intensified 
>with the oncoming
> generation gap.
> 
> Novels from Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" to 
>Curtis Sittenfeld's
> "Prep," movies from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The 
>Breakfast Club," and
> countless rock 'n' roll songs echoed Salinger's message 
>of kids under siege.
> One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin 
>Braddock of "The
> Graduate," was but a blander version of Salinger's 
>narrator.
> 
> The cult of "Catcher" turned tragic in 1980 when crazed 
>Beatles fan Mark
> David Chapman shot and killed John Lennon, citing 
>Salinger's novel as an
> inspiration and stating that "this extraordinary book 
>holds many answers."
> 
> By the 21st century, Holden himself seemed relatively 
>mild, but Salinger's
> book remained a standard in school curriculums and was 
>discussed on
> countless Web sites and a fan page on Facebook.
> 
> Salinger's other books don't equal the influence or 
>sales of "Catcher," but
> they are still read, again and again, with great 
>affection and intensity.
> Critics, at least briefly, rated Salinger as a more 
>accomplished and daring
> short story writer than John Cheever.
> 
> The collection "Nine Stories" features the classic "A 
>Perfect Day for
> Bananafish," the deadpan account of a suicidal Army 
>veteran and the little
> girl he hopes, in vain, will save him. The novel "Franny 
>and Zooey," like
> "Catcher," is a youthful, obsessively articulated quest 
>for redemption,
> featuring a memorable argument between Zooey and his 
>mother as he attempts
> to read in the bathtub.
> 
> "Catcher," narrated from a mental facility, begins with 
>Holden recalling his
> expulsion from a Pennsylvania boarding school for 
>failing four classes and
> for general apathy.
> 
> He returns home to Manhattan, where his wanderings take 
>him everywhere from
> a Times Square hotel to a rainy carousel ride with his 
>kid sister, Phoebe,
> in Central Park. He decides he wants to escape to a 
>cabin out West, but
> scorns questions about his future as just so much 
>phoniness.
> 
> "I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you 
>do it?" he reasons.
> "The answer is, you don't. I think I am, but how do I 
>know? I swear it's a
> stupid question."
> 
> "The Catcher in the Rye" became both required and 
>restricted reading,
> periodically banned by a school board or challenged by 
>parents worried by
> its frank language and the irresistible chip on Holden's 
>shoulder.
> 
> "I'm aware that a number of my friends will be saddened, 
>or shocked, or
> shocked-saddened, over some of the chapters of `The 
>Catcher in the Rye.'
> Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all of my 
>best friends are
> children," Salinger wrote in 1955, in a short note for 
>"20th Century
> Authors."
> 
> "It's almost unbearable to me to realize that my book 
>will be kept on a
> shelf out of their reach," he added.
> 
> Salinger also wrote the novellas "Raise High the Roof 
>Beam, Carpenters" and
> "Seymour - An Introduction," both featuring the 
>neurotic, fictional Glass
> family which appeared in much of his work.
> 
> His last published story, "Hapworth 16, 1928," ran in 
>The New Yorker in
> 1965. By then he was increasingly viewed like a 
>precocious child whose
> manner had soured from cute to insufferable. "Salinger 
>was the greatest mind
> ever to stay in prep school," Norman Mailer once 
>commented.
> 
> In 1997, it was announced that "Hapworth" would be 
>reissued as a book -
> prompting a (negative) New York Times review. The book, 
>in typical Salinger
> style, didn't appear. In 1999, New Hampshire neighbor 
>Jerry Burt said the
> author had told him years earlier that he had written at 
>least 15
> unpublished books kept locked in a safe at his home.
> 
> "I love to write and I assure you I write regularly," 
>Salinger said in a
> brief interview with the Baton Rouge (La.) Advocate in 
>1980. "But I write
> for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left 
>alone to do it."
> 
> Jerome David Salinger was born Jan. 1, 1919, in New York 
>City. His father
> was a wealthy importer of cheeses and meat and the 
>family lived for years on
> Park Avenue.
> 
> Like Holden, Salinger was an indifferent student with a 
>history of trouble
> in various schools. He was sent to Valley Forge Military 
>Academy at age 15,
> where he wrote at night by flashlight beneath the covers 
>and eventually
> earned his only diploma. In 1940, he published his first 
>fiction, "The Young
>Folks," in Story magazine.
> 
> He served in the Army from 1942 to 1946, carrying a 
>typewriter with him most
> of the time, writing "whenever I can find the time and 
>an unoccupied
> foxhole," he told a friend.
> 
> Returning to New York, the lean, dark-haired Salinger 
>pursued an intense
> study of Zen Buddhism but also cut a gregarious figure 
>in the bars of
> Greenwich Village, where he astonished acquaintances 
>with his proficiency in
> rounding up dates. One drinking buddy, author A.E. 
>Hotchner, would remember
> Salinger as the proud owner of an "ego of cast iron," 
>contemptuous of
> writers and writing schools, convinced that he was the 
>best thing to happen
> to American letters since Herman Melville.
> 
> Holden first appeared as a character in the story "Last 
>Day of the Last
>Furlough," published in 1944 in the Saturday Evening 
>Post. Salinger's
> stories ran in several magazines, especially The New 
>Yorker, where excerpts
> from "Catcher" were published.
> 
> The finished novel quickly became a best seller and 
>early reviews were
> blueprints for the praise and condemnation to come. The 
>New York Times found
> the book "an unusually brilliant first novel" and 
>observed that Holden's
> "delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with 
>the adult
> delinquencies with which he is confronted."
> 
> But the Christian Science Monitor was not charmed. "He 
>is alive, human,
> preposterous, profane and pathetic beyond belief," 
>critic T. Morris
> Longstreth wrote of Holden.
> 
> "Fortunately, there cannot be many of him yet. But one 
>fears that a book
> like this given wide circulation may multiply his kind - 
>as too easily
> happens when immortality and perversion are recounted by 
>writers of talent
> whose work is countenanced in the name of art or good 
>intention."
> 
> The world had come calling for Salinger, but Salinger 
>was bolting the door.
> By 1952, he had migrated to Cornish. Three years later, 
>he married Claire
> Douglas, with whom he had two children, Peggy and 
>Matthew, before their 1967
> divorce. (Salinger was also briefly married in the 1940s 
>to a woman named
> Sylvia; little else is known about her).
> 
> Meanwhile, he was refusing interviews, instructing his 
>agent to forward no
> fan mail and reportedly spending much of his time 
>writing in a cement
> bunker. Sanity, apparently, could only come through 
>seclusion.
> 
> "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of 
>those deaf-mutes,"
> Holden says in "Catcher."
> 
> "That way I wouldn't have to have any ... stupid useless 
>conversations with
> anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd 
>have to write it on
> a piece of paper and shove it over to me. I'd build me a 
>little cabin
> somewhere with the dough I made."
> 
> Although Salinger initially contemplated a theater 
>production of "Catcher,"
> with the author himself playing Holden, he turned down 
>numerous offers for
> film or stage rights, including requests from Billy 
>Wilder and Elia Kazan.
> Bids from Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein also 
>were rejected.
> 
> Salinger became famous for not wanting to be famous. In 
>1982, he sued a man
> who allegedly tried to sell a fictitious interview with 
>the author to a
> national magazine. The impostor agreed to desist and 
>Salinger dropped the
> suit.
> 
>Five years later, another Salinger legal action resulted 
>in an important
> decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court 
>refused to allow
> publication of an unauthorized biography, by Ian 
>Hamilton, that quoted from
> the author's unpublished letters. Salinger had 
>copyrighted the letters when
> he learned about Hamilton's book, which came out in a 
>revised edition in
> 1988.
> 
> In 2009, Salinger sued to halt publication of John David 
>California's "60
> Years Later," an unauthorized sequel to "Catcher" that 
>imagined Holden in
> his 70s, misanthropic as ever.
> 
> Against Salinger's will, the curtain was parted in 
>recent years. In 1998,
> author Joyce Maynard published her memoir "At Home in 
>the World," in which
> she detailed her eight-month affair with Salinger in the 
>early 1970s, when
> she was less than half his age. She drew an unflattering 
>picture of a
> controlling personality with eccentric eating habits, 
>and described their
> problematic sex life.
> 
> Salinger's alleged adoration of children apparently did 
>not extend to his
> own. In 2000, daughter Margaret Salinger's 
>"Dreamcatcher" portrayed the
> writer as an unpleasant recluse who drank his own urine 
>and spoke in
> tongues.
> 
> Ms. Salinger said she wrote the book because she was 
>"absolutely determined
> not to repeat with my son what had been done with me."
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