Literary recluse Salinger turns 90 - Americas, World - The Independent

Today is the 90th birthday of literary recluse J.D. Salinger

"A smaller writer would surely have exhausted the patience of his fans long ago. Salinger has not published anything since 1965. That was Hapworth 16, 1924, which took up most of an issue of The New Yorker. That said, a plan has been in the offing for more than 10 years to have it republished as a book. It will finally be released this month. Or that, at least, is what it says on the Amazon.com website."

Frankly, Salinger exhausted my patience with the crap he DID publish after "Nine Stories." Talk about overrated. As far as I can see, his entire reputation rests on Catcher in the Rye (1951) and a collection of short stories (published together in book form in 1953). His later novellas bite the big one. I'm not surprised that he stopped writing. I would have done the same in his situation.

As for "Catcher" itself, I wonder if it still resonates with kids today, or if it seems like a quaint work that they read only because it appears on their required reading list, like Ethan Frome, or The Moonstone, or Arrowsmith.