Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger dies [USA Today]

Suffice to say, I was a fan. Still am, though less so these days, and maybe not as much of Catcher, more so of the Eastern-tinged short stories. (One expects this not uncommon we fans get older and inevitably become phonies ourselves.)

The A.P. obit carried by USA Today is decent, with a fair amount of detail and insight about the writing, though one wishes they did not close the piece with unsavory details sourced from memoirs by third parties.

NEW YORK (AP) — 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.” [Continues at USA Today]