Salinger's Silence

After publishing Catcher in the Rye and several masterful short stories, Salinger withdrew almost entirely from public life. He moved to Cornish, New Hampshire, and stopped publishing in 1965. He lived until 2010, reportedly writing every day, but refused to release any new work.

His withdrawal mirrored Holden's own wish to escape a phony world. Fans and journalists made pilgrimages to his property; he answered with lawsuits. His silence grew as famous as his fiction, raising a question: was a writer who understood alienation so well living the condition he described, or simply guarding himself from a world that would not leave genius alone?