catcher in the rye

As anyone who pays attention to the market can attest, valuation is a delicate dance. And as the recent decision to auction The Catcher in the Rye author's toilet demonstrates, this process is even more pronounced when the commodity is a commode.

It happens all the time: An author/musician/actor dies, and sales of his most famous book/album/film immediately go through the roof. In the case of J.D. Salinger's passing Thursday, we were able to quantify and track the "death effect" in real time thanks to the sales rank feature on Amazon.com...