Diary of a Mad Editor

One of the last great literary heavyweights of the last century, died the other day, of natural causes. J. D. Salinger, the notoriously reclusive literary legend who hadn’t published anything since 1965 and had rarely been seen since the 70’s passed away at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire at the ripe old age of 91. Although, Salinger had published a few stories in the 1940’s and had struck-up a friendship with Ernest Hemingway while serving in the Second World War, it wasn’t until the publication of his most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, that Salinger earned his place in American literature.

Salinger began writing short stories while in high school, and published a number of stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker. After the publication of Catcher, Salinger became at once a popular, influential and controversial writer. Since it’s publication, the famous novel has sold around 65 million copies, averaging 250000 copies per year. Salinger followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924," appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.

Although many film producers pursued the possibility of translating Catcher in the Rye for the big screen, Salinger refused to allow it due to an early bad experience with a screen adaptation of one of his short stories. Salinger was also famous for pursuing legal action to block unauthorized adaptations and derivative works base on his writing.