Reclusive author J.D. Salinger died. He was 91. Salinger was best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, and its 1961 follow-up, Franny and Zooey.

Of the countless writers Salinger influenced were Pulitzer Prize-winning scribe John Updike (which: meh) who said, "the short stories of J. D. Salinger really opened my eyes as to how you can weave fiction out of a set of events that seem almost unconnected, or very lightly connected.... [Reading Salinger] stick[s] in my mind as really having moved me a step up, as it were, toward knowing how to handle my own material."

His work also had quite an effect on an ardent Jodie Foster fan.

Famous for not wanting to be famous, Salinger lived for decades "in self-imposed isolation in [a] small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.," where he died of natural causes.