On Jan. 27, the world lost one of the greatest writers to have ever lived. It’s an amazement that J.D. Salinger, as an author of a vast assortment of mainly short story collections and novellas, is so widely-acclaimed for the first (and only) novel he ever published, “The Catcher in the Rye.”

Published in 1951, an estimated 250,000 copies of “Catcher” are still sold each year, according to The New York Times. The numbers of lives that Salinger’s novel changed, and will continue to change, with the ground-breaking novel are immeasurable.

His legacy will be one that allows teenagers from all parts of the world to sit down with a book, Holden’s voice narrating truthfully and passionately, and realize they aren’t alone in thinking the things they so often do.

Mike McNally, an English professor of various creative writing courses, explained what he thought to be the essence of J.D. Salinger’s accomplishments.

“Salinger’s work opened a door for many, many other writers to go through. And certainly a herd rushed through that door. His influence may in part be explained by the accessibility of his work to readers and media alike.”

Yet despite how agreeably-held this comment is by so many of Salinger’s readers, the treatment of his death by the national media has been nothing short of disgraceful.

Salinger’s relationship with the media had been unstable and destructive throughout his entire life. From when he once, as a favor, gave a young student a special interview to be published in the high school newspaper, only to be later told that the student sold the story to a bigger newspaper behind his back, to when his ex-lover Joyce Maynard auctioned off personal love letters he had written to her during their teenage years, Salinger had been mistreated to the point of reclusion.

Not even one day after Salinger’s death, numerous articles popped up on the Internet like some wildly contagious virus, all bearing titles of the same nature: Who will get the film adaptation rights to Salinger’s classic novel?

No talk of his legacy. No talk of his importance. Only questions as to who holds the rights and who will find a legal loophole in order to make the book into a film that J.D. Salinger had opposed for his entire life.

After multiple lawsuits and court hearings following attempts to make a sequel or pseudo-film, you’d think people would stop bugging a person deemed so important. Not even in death does he have peace with this. In a personal letter dated July 19, 1957, Salinger said, “For me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice. … He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique.”

Like Holden can’t be separated from his voice, we can’t separate Salinger from his dearly beloved novel.

It’s up to us to save Salinger, just as he once saved us.

Reach Brian at brian.p.anderson@asu.edu