The more I read about J.D. Salinger since his death the more I like him. According to yesterday's New York Times, he was a regular townsman in Cornish, New Hampshire who loved the monthly church suppers, was in local stores daily, had lunch at the local cafe, and drove his Toyota land cruiser to the neighboring town of Windsor, Vermont. (Speaking of his travel, the LA Times last week published a picture of a beaming Salinger talking to a young woman at a theater in South Florida in the early 1980's--some hermit!) From the NY Times story I gather that he was a good and friendly neighbor, not the kooky recluse demanding fans and journalists made him out to be.
Now he is gone at age 91, and it seems he has prevailed in his great joust with the gods of celebrity, photo ops, and television. Almost none of his writing contemporaries were so fortunate--most became, to some degree, public property--that part of your yard that really is owned by the city but that you are required to tend. Good for J. D. Salinger! He beat the whole corrupt flying circus and lived his long life in his own house at his own pace.
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