A Little Bit of Time for J.D. Salinger

I was in a bookstore, appropriately enough, when one of the staff members walked up to a floor worker nearby and said that J.D. Salinger had just died. I immediately joined the conversation and marveled at how one writer could bring strangers together like that.
We were soon joined by another floor worker who had not heard the news. Her reaction was interesting: she went off to order more copies of "The Catcher in the Rye" and rearrange the book section under his name. There was no need for this. I visited that stall ahead of her and noted the eight copies of this book, and the few others that were there ("Raise High the Roof Beam", "Franny and Zooey", "Nine Stories").
At the library, I picked up a copy of "Raise High" and am now trying to read it. Not so easy to do. As with many writers that I enjoyed as a child, my opinion has changed. I had never read this one, and I am glad that I did not pick it up as a child. It would have coloured any idea I had of Salinger as a writer.
Yes, "The Catcher in the Rye" is a classic (65 million + sold and now counting), but I think I see why he decided to stop adding to his own canon. The books that followed and preceded it could not match that sort of impact. In the press, it was announced that he had piles of notebooks with unpublished and unedited handwritten work.
I think they should stay that way; as private as the man himself.
J.D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)
P.S. The above letter was one that Mr Salinger wrote to a student looking for advice. It says it all.