J.D. Salinger

"If you really want to hear about it..."

One year I traipsed around the winter campus of the University of Manitoba in my tweed great coat. I called it my Holden Caulfield.

"The Catcher in the Rye" is and was and probably will continue to be a monumental success in so many ways - as a piece of literature, a publishing gold mine and a mysteriously alluring cultural icon.

Today when students from other countries ask me what book they should read, I buy them a copy of "Catcher."

Is there a course at any school in North America that doesn't have this slender volume on its required reading list.

A few more books and short stories and then the famous retreat.

Hidden in the woods somewhere in New England, J.D. Salinger became even more famous and more sought-after.

Here is the N.Y. Times obit.