J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)

"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. That doesn't happen much, though." (Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye)

Reclusive author Jerome David Salinger died on Wednesday of natural causes at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Following the publication of his novel The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger became one of the world's most admired authors. Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero of the novel, spoke to adolescents in a rebellious voice they recognized as their own. Salinger withdrew from public life and the fame that Catcher in the Rye brought to him. He had not published anything since the 1960s and had not been interviewed since 1980. In a Boston Globe interview that year, he said, "I love to write, and I assure you I write regularly. But I write for myself and I want to be left absolutely alone to do it."