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My Salinger Year Hardcover – June 3, 2014

by Joanna Rakoff (Author)

196 customer reviews

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Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny: a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled with one of the last great figures of the century.

At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office, where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and old-time agents doze at their desks after martini lunches. At night she goes home to the tiny, threadbare Williamsburg apartment she shares with her socialist boyfriend. Precariously balanced between glamour and poverty, surrounded by titanic personalities, and struggling to trust her own artistic instinct, Rakoff is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. But as she reads the candid, heart-wrenching letters from his readers around the world, she finds herself unable to type out the agency’s decades-old form response. Instead, drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the template and begins writing back. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms.

Rakoff paints a vibrant portrait of a bright, hungry young woman navigating a heady and longed-for world, trying to square romantic aspirations with burgeoning self-awareness, the idea of a life with life itself. Charming and deeply moving, filled with electrifying glimpses of an American literary icon, My Salinger Year is the coming-of-age story of a talented writer. Above all, it is a testament to the universal power of books to shape our lives and awaken our true selves.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2014: Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there existed a world in which writers used typewriters, publishers and agents sent manuscripts (on paper!) via the U.S. Postal Service, and starry-eyed ambitious young people moved to New York to try their luck in the literary world. (Okay, so that last bit still holds true.) It was the late ‘90s when writer-to-be Joanna Rakoff got her first job in New York publishing as an assistant to the woman who represented the great reclusive author J.D. Salinger. In the winsome and meticulously observed My Salinger Year, Rakoff recounts her experiences as an earlier-era Lena Dunham-creation, complete with a ratty Brooklyn apartment, strident anti-establishment boyfriend, and big, big dreams. “We all have to start somewhere,” is how Rakoff begins her story of being young, gifted, and possessed of a coveted “editorial assistant” job that her parents (my parents, your parents, everyone’s parents) would call “secretary.” While it’s true that J.D. “Jerry” Salinger figures into the narrative--and rather sympathetically so--it’s a mistake to say he’s at the heart of it. Youth, adventure, hope, ambition, and a keen eye and ear are what make this book run; with it, Rakoff--author of the novel A Fortunate Age--takes her place among such illustrious coming-of-age-in-New-York writers as Sylvia Plath, Candace Bushnell, and, well, maybe even J.D. Salinger. --Sara Nelson

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Rakoff, the author of a much praised first novel, A Fortunate Age (2009), chronicles her year working at the problematically retro New York literary agency that had been representing the reclusive, nearly deaf, and still demanding J. D. Salinger since 1942. It’s 1996, and Rakoff’s chain-smoking boss is loud and cryptic. There is no computer on the premises, and Rakoff’s nebulous responsibilities entail using an ancient Dictaphone and handling Salinger’s heart-battering fan mail—hundreds of letters from lonely, angry teens and grateful military veterans who recognize in the author one of their damaged own. A poet involved with an unsavory, wannabe novelist, Rakoff misses her far more reliable college boyfriend. She finds her low-wage job enchanting, intimidating, ludicrous, and, briefly, thrilling when Salinger pitches the agency into a tizzy by allowing a teeny-tiny press to turn “Hapworth” (1965), his last published story, into a book. As Rakoff recounts her funny and wrenching personal predicaments, she also charts the quiet battle of attrition between the values of the old publishing world, personal and impassioned, and the aggressively invasive corporate imperative. An intriguing look at the ever-fascinating Salinger and a gracefully incisive tale of love and literature, creativity and survival. --Donna Seaman

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Product details

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Knopf; 1St Edition edition (June 3, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780307958006
ISBN-13: 978-0307958006
ASIN: 0307958000
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 196 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2033 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Journalists
- #12924 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women
- #36471 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Memoirs

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NOSTALGIC MOMENTS

September 18, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Set in Manhattan during the late 1990s, My Salinger Year is a memoir of a time and place that can evoke nostalgia for those who lived there and during those times.

It takes a very unique style to draw me into a memoir, and the author had that, as I was engaged from the very first page.

What reader isn't fascinated with publishing and literary agencies? And who doesn't want to know more about the mysterious J. D. Salinger?

Well, we don't actually "meet" him in this book, but our narrator keeps us interested by her thoughts and the various fan letters to Salinger which she must read and respond to...but the rules are clear. The responses must be in a "form letter" style. So what happens when our narrator decides to go out on her own and take a personal interest in some of them? Does she do so because she has, in fact, spoken to Salinger (Jerry) on the phone and feels a connection?

In an era before computers were everywhere, Joanna typed on a Selectric and used a Dictaphone. I felt catapulted backwards in time to my own "secretarial" days when those machines were the norm. And then, once computers were available, who could even imagine the antiquated office equipment of those times?

The Boss is not given a name, and, except for Salinger, we know nothing of other clients of this agency. We learn a little more about The Boss as the book draws to a close, and I felt a personal connection to her then. Also the story shows the author's dilemma as she tries to sort out her unsatisfying relationship with her live-in boyfriend Don. Years later, she looks back at this time in her life and shares her thoughts.

Themes of nostalgia, loss, and what resonates for readers who are fans of Salinger and other beloved writers, this was a captivating memoir that earned 4.5 stars for me.

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Sarah's Book Shelves

My Favorite Memoir of the Year

November 19, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Though the title mentions Salinger, he is not the main focus of My Salinger Year. Sure, he makes appearances, but this is more of a coming of age story about a young girl trying to make it in NYC and a company trying to adjust to the modern world. You do not have to be a Salinger fan to enjoy this book. I was pleasantly surprised by this and ended up loving this book...enough to push it onto my upcoming Best Books of 2014 List and my Holiday Gift Guide!

At first, I kept thinking Rakoff was living in the 1950's rather than the 1990's. The smoking in the office, the typewriters (and accompanying lack of computers), and the huge Dictaphone contraptions all confounded me until I read this quote from Joanna's friend, Jenny...

"But really the Agency is like something out of Dickens. You step inside, and it's like you've time traveled back a hundred years."

Then, I realized I was supposed to have been Jedi mind tricked into thinking I was watching an episode of "Mad Men"! However, this element was the source of a lot of the story's humor and eccentricity.

What really made me love My Salinger Year was Rakoff's tone and writing style (hence the number of quotes in this review!). She writes with humor, irony, and an appreciation for the ridiculous.

On her increasingly irrelevant boss:
"My boss, as far as I knew, had no children, and she - like a certain breed of adult - appeared to have never been a child herself, but rather to have materialized on earth fully formed, in a taupe-hued pantsuit, cigarette in hand."

I especially loved her commentary on Don, her Communist boyfriend who tries so hard to be "authentic" that he ends up just being ridiculous.

"He surrounded himself with fools - the broken, the failed or failing, the sad and confused - so that he might be their king. Which, obviously, made him nothing but the king of fools."

"Don had refused to come home with me for my grandmother's birthday, citing his opposition to the tradition, but - here again - I suspected that this alleged ideological stance might be simply a smoke screen for either poverty or cheapness, that he didn't want to spend the money on a bus ticket, not to mention a gift for my grandmother."

Though I'm not a devoted Salinger fan and the only thing of his that I've read is The Catcher in the Rye (and I've only read that once...in high school), I did enjoy his eccentricity and found the humor in all the intricate rules that surrounded the Agency's "handling" of him. I also enjoyed learning some of the history behind his writing and am now more likely to reread The Catcher in the Rye at some point.

Rakoff's writing and the coming-of-age element to her story made this one of my favorite books of the year and my favorite memoir of the year.

Check out my blog, Sarah's Book Shelves, for more reviews.

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MeganTop Contributor: Fantasy Books

My Salinger Year

January 4, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Joanna chronicles her first year in the real world working. At the literary agency, she finds out that the agencies main client is the one, the only, J.D Salinger.

It was a fun read at times, and as a book lover/english-nerd myself, I enjoyed hearing about the authors real love of books. I realized when reading this book that somehow I've gone 28 years without reading anything from Salinger, so immediately upon finishing this book I bought Catcher in the Rye. As the fan letters to Salinger that are chronicled in this novel made it so I felt like I was really missing out on a great author.

I think I would have liked the book more if it just focused on life at the agency. As I mean, for me the stories of her NYC life with her friends and her boyfriend just confused me. The friends seemed flat...and the boyfriend horrible. They just seemed like unnecessary characters who didn't really do anything for me. I mean come on, the bf couldn't have been that horrible or why would you stay with him for a year? If these side characters were going to be included in the novel, I would have appreciated more of an depth and honest look at them.

One person found this helpful

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Salinger is the literary, inspiring giant we all believe him to be, and then again he wasn't

April 16, 2015

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

This book was a little slow-going, filled with details in a developing industry that were necessary to bring the story to life but didn't exactly make for exciting reading. I was more interested in the relationships (as I am in most stories) with other characters in the book, including the reclusive and eccentric JD Salinger, as well as the admirers with whom she personally corresponds, but there wasn't much 'meat' here in regards to that. I appreciated the final chapter where Joanna gives her 'eulogy' of Salinger, and insight into his work, "Salinger's stories, to a one, are anatomies of loss, every inch of them, from start to finish." Honestly, simply understanding the impact he had on her life, no matter how briefly she interacted with him or how superficial their relationship was, was worth reading this book. Salinger is the literary, inspiring giant we all believe him to be, and then again he wasn't. And that makes him even greater

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