In a way, Salinger is still exerting similar control over our ability to define his legacy two years after his death on Jan. 27, 2010 – and he is using his writings to maintain that control. The difficulty in defining Salinger’s legacy stems from his decades of seclusion after his last publication in 1965 and the stubborn hope of millions that he continued to write for the next 45 years.

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Other historical items listed on eBay by the same dealer are are even more expensive. Among them is a note ostensibly sent by Herman Melville to his publisher, George P. Putnam, which reads only, "Dear Sir: Re-enclosed is the proof. Very truly yours, H Melville." It can be yours for $95,000 -- plus $19 shipping and handling.

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The young hero of J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is often described as one of the great unreliable narrators in American fiction -- a character whose self-image is at odds with how he's seen by the rest of the world as well as his older, wiser creator. But when a Daily Telegraph story suggested that the late, reclusive writer's signature work might finally land on the big screen -- after decades of Salinger telling an endless parade of Hollywood phonies to take their movie pitches and shove them -- Holden's gripe struck me as a rare instance of a quote worth taking at face value.

A convergence of factors makes it likely that somehow, someday, there will be a movie. True, a lawyer for the Salinger estate said, "There are no plans to sell the film rights." But that only sounds definitive until you get to the part of the Telegraph story that says the writer's estate could be hit with a huge, retroactive estate tax bill that could be settled fast by auctioning the film rights to "Catcher" -- and that a 1957 letter by the author described those unsold rights as "a kind of insurance policy" that could support his wife and daughter if he ran out of money. When's the last time a lawyer won an argument with an accountant?

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Ask yourself -- did you ever see them in the same room together?

"If you really want to hear about it," bin Laden says in an audiotape released today, "you'll want to hear all the David Copperfield crap about my lousy childhood and how I was abandoned by my father Muhammed Awad bin Laden because I was the only son of his tenth wife, but I don't feel like going into it."

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Despite his elusiveness, Salinger succeeded at locating himself at the exact intersection of several kinds of American ambivalence. He was famous for not wanting to be famous, sought after primarily because he did not want to be found. His success made his seclusion possible; his seclusion made the hordes of would-be biographers and interviewers and memoir-writing past associates even more frantic to expose him to the public eye. He created profoundly alienated characters with whom millions of readers have identified.

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Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's literary representative. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

"The Catcher in the Rye," with its immortal teenage protagonist, the twisted, rebellious Holden Caulfield, came out in 1951, a time of anxious, Cold War conformity and the dawn of modern adolescence. The Book-of-the-Month Club, which made "Catcher" a featured selection, advised that for "anyone who has ever brought up a son" the novel will be "a source of wonder and delight -- and concern."

Enraged by all the "phonies" who make "me so depressed I go crazy," Holden soon became American literature's most famous anti-hero since Huckleberry Finn. The novel's sales are astonishing -- more than 60 million copies worldwide -- and its impact incalculable. Decades after publication, the book remains a defining expression of that most American of dreams -- to never grow up.

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Many of the controversial novels of the last century were publicly condemned because it was believed they would lead to a decay in public morals. These criticisms were often patronizing ("Won't somebody please think of the children?"), expressing the belief that less educated members of society were likely to imitate anything and everything they read. The prosecutor in the 1960 British obscenity trial of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" asked jurors if it was the kind of book they wanted their wife or servants to read.

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As might be expected, there are almost as many variations on the theme "the first time I read 'The Catcher in the Rye'" as there are copies of the book in print. And in that respect it isn't so dissimilar from how earlier generations must have remembered their initial encounters with the "Iliad" or "Hamlet" or "The Howdy-Doody Show." The difference is that, in the case of Salinger, we seem to have the insatiable urge to share with him our experience of his work.

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Margaret (Peggy) Salinger's memoir of her life and of her father, J.D. Salinger, "Dream Catcher," exposes the cracks in the facade of the Salinger mystique. But the truth was always there in J.D. Salinger's fiction. More than 35 years ago, the late Mary McCarthy, writing in Harper's magazine, applied her considerable faculties to Salinger's oeuvre; what she found in it, to use her own word, was "terrifying."

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"Lovers of Their Time" by William Trevor (in "The Collected Stories")

A doomed affair, circa 1963, between a middle-aged British travel agent trapped in a miserable marriage and a young shopgirl looking to settle down. The two begin to tryst during their lunch hour in a marble bathroom in London's Great Western Royal Hotel, where, after making love, they sit together in a giant tub, miraculously undisturbed.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger (in "Nine Stories")

Salinger's classic takes place in a Florida hotel, over the course of a single afternoon. Up in Room 507, Muriel Glass polishes her nails and speaks to her mother on the phone. Out on the beach, her husband, Seymour, lies on the sand in his bathrobe, takes a little girl into the ocean and kisses the arch of her foot. From three spare scenes, we apprehend an entire tragedy.

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"Hello, can I have J.D. Salinger's phone number?" I asked them.

"What for?"

"I just want to call him and tell him how much I liked his book."

There was a pause on the line. "You're not some kook, are you?"

"Oh no."

"OK then." The woman gave me the number. It was (603) 947-3309. I dialed the number. A man answered. "Yes?"

"Is this J.D. Salinger?"

"Yes. Who's this?"

"Um ... You don't know me, but I just finished 'The Catcher in the Rye' and I wanted to tell you how much I liked it."

"Yeah? Wow. That's really nice of you."

There was a pause. I wasn't sure what else to say. "Yeah, well, I really liked it."

Another pause. This was getting kind of awkward. I heard Salinger clear his throat. "So ... um ... Would you like to come up for a visit?"

"Gee, I don't know, Mr. Salinger. I wouldn't want to intrude."

"No no, come on up. Do you know how to get to Cornish, N.H.?"

"I'm sure I can find it."

"OK. I'll pick you up in front of the post office on Thursday at 3 p.m."

"Great. Wait a minute -- how will I recognize you?"

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I find it very sad that such revelations as "A summer
blockbuster is an act of commerce, not art," and "Leia's hair looks like
pastry," and while we're at it, "the later episodes will look older than the
first" are seen as new or worthy of repetition.

I don't think Lucas has made any claims toward being anything but a
businessman and a storyteller. If Homer could have sold little Odyssey
figurines as he barded about, I'm sure he would have welcomed the food
brought to his table; and Lucas is no Homer. But to complain of Lucas'
lack of "art" in creating what is admittedly a piece of popular culture
revelry is petty indeed. Evil? Yes, that's it, Toby; stand up to the big
bad movie man. A little perspective, please.

-- Gregory Maupin

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Before we start handing out laurels, however, we'd like to stop for a moment to talk about the books that, in our estimation, weren't quite as successful. George Orwell surely got it right about book criticism when he said that most reviewers tend to be overly generous. "It is almost impossible to mention books in bulk without grossly overpraising most of them," he wrote. "Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are."

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Is this such a bad thing? The economics of fame is the specialty of Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University and author of the recently published book "In Praise of Commercial Culture" (Harvard University Press). Cowen is working on a new book about the culture of celebrity, tentatively titled "Servants of Fame."

With the American media's habit of bestowing celebrity awards about to reach its end-of-the-year fever pitch, Salon spoke with Cowen about the ever-cheapening price of fame, and its ever increasing financial rewards.

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Who could resist the invitation? No one, it seems.

Begun by John Updike:

Miss Tasso Polk at ten-ten alighted from the elevator onto the olive tiles of the nineteenth floor only lightly nagged by a sense of something wrong. The Magazine's crest, that great black M, the thing masculine that had most profoundly penetrated her life, echoed from its inlaid security the thoughtful humming in her mind: "m."

Dr. Seuss:

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