Literature lovers, malcontents and misfits everywhere have been in mourning since their patron saint, “Catcher in the Rye” author J.D. Salinger passed away yesterday at age 91. The beloved scribe had been living as a recluse since the 1960s and repeatedly turned down requests for interviews. In fact, he considered publishing itself an invasion of privacy; he hadn’t published anything original since the 1965 short story “Hapworth 16, 1928″ and actually sued to block the publication of an unauthorized sequel last year.

So, it’s fairly safe to assume that he would never, ever, ever approve a cinematic depiction of his most famous creation, sullen preppy Holden Caulfield.  You’d be right for two reasons: One, he actually explained why in a personal letter some fifty years ago. Two, he once gave Hollywood permission to adapt one of his works — and he got burned so badly that he vowed never to do so again.

In 1957, Salinger wrote to a Mr. Herbert, declining to sell the rights to “Catcher in the Rye” yet again:

“The Catcher in the Rye” is a very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes” – only a fool would deny that – but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons – in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique.

… Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biased opinion, is essentially unactable. A Sensitive, Intelligent, Talented Young Actor in a Reversible Coat wouldn’t be nearly enough.

One thing’s for sure: Salinger knew his own creation. It’s easy to film simple set pieces like Holden’s last encounters with his roommate and his teacher at boarding school, not to mention how beautiful Holden’s holiday trip through New York City would look. It would be a very easy movie to film, but the ultimate success of such a film would depend entirely on making Holden’s internal dialogue believable and universal. For example, how do you make Holden’s titular fantasy about the rye make sense without making Holden certifiable in the process? Considering where we meet him initially, this is a lot harder than it looks.

Of course, by 1957, Salinger had already experienced the kind of fame that most writers can only dream of — and had started to reject it. He may have had good reason: After negotiations over the movie rights to another story went nowhere, Salinger jumped at the chance to sell the rights to his 1947 short story “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” to famed producer Samuel Goldwyn. Although the film, “My Foolish Heart,” earned multiple Academy Award nominations, the movie was a critical failure that bore little resemblance to its source material — and Salinger got out of the Hollywood biz for good. Over the years, Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein, among others, unsuccessfully tried to get Salinger to hand over the rights to “Catcher.” Almost as if to fill the void, inspired filmmakers have tried to create their own Holdens, with varying success. (In my opinion, the indie “Igby Goes Down” — written and directed by a guy who got kicked out of boarding school himself — comes pretty close.) Clearly, Holden Caulfield remains indelible more than a half-century after his creation.

Salinger mentioned in the 1957 letter that rumor had him leaving the rights to the novel to his family as a makeshift insurance policy.  Other rumors have his will barring any future adaptations of his work. Regardless of how the facts shake out, we can take comfort in the fact that at least one author saw himself more as a protector of his work than its creator. Salinger once joked that he’d like to see an adaptation of his most famous novel, but “Holden wouldn’t approve.”