Reprinted from USA Today:
The reclusive writer who gave literary voice to the emotional and psychological anguish of teenagers throughout the world is gone.
J.D. Salinger, 91, author of the 1951 masterpiece Catcher in the Rye, died of natural causes at his longtime home in Cornish, N.H., said the author's son, in a statement from the author's literary representative.
Catcher in the Rye was the only Salinger novel released in his lifetime, but it is an acknowledged masterpiece and established the author as one of the most influential writers of the last century.
His carefully structured novel centered on an unhappy 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield. Expelled from prep school, Caulfield narrates the story after an apparent mental breakdown.
More significantly, the novel was the first to capture the post-World War II alienation of youth: the idiomatic slang, the rage against the hypocrisy of the adult world and the fury at the inevitable loss of innocence that growing up demands. Holden's deepest feelings are for his little sister, Phoebe, and his dead brother, Allie, who died of leukemia.
Although published in the early 1950s, the book's themes foreshadowed the youthful rebellion of the 1960s. It remains controversial more than half a century later because of its sexual content, questioning of traditional ideals, and language.
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