Jerome David “J.D.” Salinger.

Jerome David “J.D.” Salinger was an American author born January 1, 1919 in Manhattan, New York, where he spent the majority of his childhood and young adulthood years. Salinger gained much respect and popularity in the literature world with his 1951 coming-of-age novel about iconoclastic teenager Holden Caulfield, hailed as a classic of postwar American life.
The Catcher in the Rye is the story of alienation and rebellion and immediately resonated with adolescent and young adult readers everywhere due to its painfully honest portrayal of an emotionally vulnerable prep school runaway. The novel was a huge success and one of the first to talk about the difficulty of growing up and maturing, and one of the first to branch from the conservative social mores of the time and delve into realistic and raw situations. In 1980, Catcher gained notoriety when John Lennon’s murderer, Mark David Chapman, was found with a copy of the book in hand, into which he had written “This is my statement” on the inside cover. Though there is much controversy that surrounds this book, Catcher is still considered a cultural high point of the middle 20th century.
Salinger had also gained somewhat of an infamous reputation for, among many things, adamantly rejecting decades’ worth of Hollywood requests to adapt his most famous book into a screenplay. Following the publication of Catcher in the Rye, Salinger retreated from society and began a secluded, misanthropic lifestyle, protecting his privacy in Cornish, New Hampshire. Neighbors very rarely saw him and he never returned phone calls or letters from readers or admirers.
Salinger’s other works were met with less success but are, nevertheless, thought-provoking, relatable and well known. Other works included novellas and collections of shorts stories such as “Franny and Zooey,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” and “Seymour: An Introduction.”
In a statement on Wednesday, January 27, Salinger’s son said that his father had died of natural causes at his New Hampshire home previously that day. Salinger’s literary representative had previously commented to The New York Times that the writer had broken his hip in May 2009 but that “his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year. He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death.”

 “I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

—J.D. Salinger

Salinger lived for more than 50 years in self-imposed isolation—refusing interviews, phone calls and public events—greatly differing from Holden Caulfield’s, who mirrored Salinger himself, opinion: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.” It is hugely disappointing that such an author, who was, and still is, greatly appreciated and admired by many around the world—young or old, rich or poor, “troubled” or not—did not carry out this wish for his many admirers.