Author JD Salinger dies

By North America correspondent Kim Landers for AM

Black and white photo of author JD Salinger

Death announced: JD Salinger had been a recluse since 1953 (Supplied)

Reclusive author JD Salinger, who wrote the American literary classic The Catcher In The Rye, has died aged 91.

In a statement, the author’s son said Salinger died of natural causes at his home in the US state of New Hampshire.

Salinger had lived in self-imposed isolation in the small town of Cornish since 1953, had not published anything since 1965 and had not been interviewed since 1980.

Catcher In The Rye, with its teenage protagonist Holden Caufield, was published in 1951 and still sells more than 200,000 copies a year.

The work has been translated into the world’s major languages and sold more than 65 million copies.

Salinger’s novel captivated teenagers all over the world with its themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, and its author is acknowledged as one of the greatest 20th century American novelists.

“In terms of him being read and being part of people’s lives and recollection of a certain phase of their life, I don’t know who tops him,” said Maura Spiegel, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University.

She says Holden Caulfield became one of American literature’s most famous anti-heroes.

“I feel that his voice seems to resonate with readers of a certain age in particular. The voice just goes into them,” she said.

“They know that voice is somewhere in them, or it becomes part of them.

“In any case, it’s incredibly intimate. His unhappiness is of a certain variety that is completely familiar to people of a certain age.”

Besides Catcher, Salinger published only a few books and collections of short stories in his literary career, including 9 Stories, Franny And Zooey, Raise High The Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.

Neighbours in Cornish rarely saw him and he never returned phone calls or letters from readers or admirers.

Only rumours, infrequent sightings, lawsuits and rare, brief interviews brought him to public attention.

As such, Salinger would have been a disappointment to his most famous creation.

“What really knocks me out,” Caulfield said in The Catcher In The Rye, “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.”

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1919.

As a teenager he began writing short stories, but it was Catcher In The Rye that sealed his reputation.

Early reviews delivered both praise and condemnation.

The New York Times described it as “an unusually brilliant first novel”, but the Christian Science Monitor said the main character – Holden Caulfield – was “preposterous, profane and pathetic beyond belief”.