I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to report that J.D. Salinger died this week, aged 91, of natural causes. I don’t want to talk about his inestimable impact on generations of readers, or his influence on generations of writers (including poor little advertising writers like me). I don’t want to riff on how famously reclusive he was, on the pilgrimages to his home made by fans and seekers and reporters, on the lawsuits and scandals that threatened the privacy he fought to maintain. And I don’t want to namedrop Holden, or Seymour, or Franny and Zooey, or any of the other characters he brought to intimate life with his singular talent.

I don’t want to write any of this, in part because I don’t want him to be gone. Mainly, though, I don’t want to write about Salinger because writing about Salinger is beside the point. The point is to read him. His retreat from society was an attempt to take himself out of the equation, to make it about his work, and his work only. As he himself explained, everything he had to say was in his books. So stop reading this. And go pick up Catcher in the Rye again, or Nine Stories, or any of the Glass family tales. Meanwhile, Mr. Salinger can enjoy his privacy, wholly undisturbed, because he’s now truly beyond our reach.