J.D. Salinger’s 90th birthday

Speculating about the reclusive author of 'The Catcher in the Rye'

“Is it wrong to wish death on a writer so that you can see what he's been up to?” said John Capone in NBC Los Angeles. J.D. Salinger, author of the classic The Catcher in the Rye, turned 90 on Thursday, presumably in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he’s lived in seclusion for the past 50 years or so.

“Salingerologists, of whom there are still a great many,” said Charles McGrath in The New York Times, have “all kinds of theories” as to what the elusive author has been up to all these years. “He hasn’t written a word. Or he writes all the time and, like Gogol at the end of his life, burns the manuscripts. Or he has volumes and volumes just waiting to be published posthumously.” Who really knows.

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