Invisible man

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 26

Author J.D. Salinger died last month at the age of 91 in Cornish, New Hampshire. Despite his reclusive existence; his last public interview took place 30 years ago, his last published work (a short story) appeared in a 1965 issue of The New Yorker, news of his death read like the passing of a great leader.

As writers go, his repertoire is small, but of course it includes the scripture of teenage alienation, The Catcher in the Rye. In Salinger's only novel, 17-year old Holden Caulfield wanders the streets of New York after he has been expelled from his private school. He faces his uncertain future and impending adulthood with equal measures of anxiety and irritation. Holden's engaging stream of consciousness conveys his feeling out of step, troubled and alone so convincingly he has become the authentic voice of every teenager.

Already, there's talk of biographies and fictionalized movies of the famously private author, stuff he would never have agreed to or accepted in his lifetime. Perhaps work he never intended for publication will be discovered and released posthumously. Knowing how vehemently Salinger sought seclusion, the possibilities sound awful.

When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it.

~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 24