J.D. Salinger, the man who introduced us to the world of Holden Caulfield, has died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire on Wednesday. He was 91.

Salinger was most known for his novel Catcher in the Rye, which was first published in 1951. It became an extremely influential piece of American literature that told the story of a teenager Holden Caulfield, who loathed all the “phonies” in the world. Holden has become the “icon of teen rebellion.”

Born to a Jewish father and an Irish-Scottish mother on January 1, 1919, Salinger was raised in Manhattan, and attended the Valley Forge Military Academy when he was 15 years old. His first story “The Young Folks” was published in 1940.

Salinger got tired of all the attention he had been getting from the public, so he shunned any interaction with the outside world and spent his last few decades at his home in New Hampshire. In Ian Hamilton’s “In Search of J.D. Salinger,” Hamilton said, “He (Salinger) was famous for not wanting to be famous.”

In an interview with the New York Times in 1974, Salinger said, “There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.”

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