J.D.Salinger has died aged 91. I was fond, am still fond, of "The Catcher in the Rye". I'm sure that many people my age feel the same. But nothing he wrote subsequently was of any importance to me. I always had a soft spot for Holden Caulfield; but Seymour Glass, what a strange fellow.

Addenda, 29th January.

"Salinger gave an interview to a schoolgirl from the local paper, in which he explained that Holden's boyhood was based on his own."

" ... his daughter lifted the lid on her childhood with a father who, she claimed, drank his own urine, kept his wife a prisoner and spoke in tongues."

So the young J.D., Holden Caulfield; the older J.D., more Seymour Glass (or perhaps weirder).