“We all have to start somewhere,” begins My Salinger Year , Joanna Rakoff’s memoir of the year she worked in a New York literary agency. The Agency, which remains unnamed in the book, is Harold Ober Associates and it represents one of the most reclusive writers of modern times, JD Salinger. What Rakoff is starting is her career, as the Bright Young Associate, The Girl Friday to her boss, who is also unnamed in the book but is only two clicks away from being revealed as “legendary literary agent” Phyllis Westberg.
Rakoff perhaps planned to start elsewhere. She had completed her master’s in English Literature at Oxford and told her college boyfriend that what she wanted to do was write poetry, not analyse those of others. But where she found herself was in New York, nearly broke and living with Don, a socialist and aspiring writer with an unapologetic roving eye. Even though the year is 1996, the Agency is stuck in a time many decades past. On her first day at work, Rakoff is introduced to her work tools — a humongous Selectric typewriter and a massive old-style Dictaphone, which has pedals to play and pause. And as she figured how to use the ancient machinery, she also sat down with her boss for a chat. “We need to talk about Jerry.”
“People are going to call and ask for his address, his phone number. They’re going to ask you to put them in touch with him. Or me. Reporters will call. Students. Graduate students. They’ll say they want to interview him or give him a prize or an honorary degree or who knows what. Producers will call about film rights. They may be very persuasive, very manipulative. But you must never — never, never, never give out his address or phone number.”
Rakoff sat through this instruction wondering who Jerry was. The first Jerry that came to her mind was, in fact, Jerry Seinfeld. It was only as she was leaving the boss’ office and her eyes fell on the row of Salinger’s books that it hit her. “Oh, that Jerry.”
Over the next few months, Rakoff was introduced not just to the hysteria surrounding Salinger, but also his works. One of the things she had to do was reply to the letters that came in for Salinger. While she was instructed to send a form letter — a template which says ‘thank you for writing but no, Salinger is not interested in whatever you have to say’, Rakoff finds herself responding differently. She writes to old war veterans, young children and lazy students with her own blend of empathy and advice.
Still, for all the references to Jerry, the book is really about Rakoff. Like those pins that you drop in Google maps, Salinger marks plots of the story along the way, but the story itself is Rakoff’s journey to finding herself. Professionally and romantically, Rakoff is in a bit of a muddle. Salinger, meanwhile, is a loud voice at the other end of the phone. There is a prospect of publishing his story Hapworth as a novella, and Salinger would call for the boss ever so often. Rakoff answered his calls, and although he never remembered her name he was pleased that she read poetry. By the time it’s certain that the Hapworth deal will not go through, Rakoff herself is ready to move on and do something else with her life.
Thirteen years later, now a mother of two kids, Rakoff is told by her husband (who is neither Don nor the college boyfriend) that Salinger is no more. She finds herself reading her favourite book Franny and Zooey , and eventually sobbing — loudly, phlegmily, helplessly. “Salinger’s stories, to a one, are anatomies of loss, every inch of them, from the start to the finish,” Rakoff writes.
In Rakoff’s deft words is revealed another anatomy of loss — the old world of publishing that the Agency inhabited. It is then perhaps a matter of simple extrapolation that in a few years from now, another anatomy of loss would be revealed — that of books themselves. It is hard now — when you can tweet to your favourite author and comment on his blog — to imagine that there ever was a world where you identified yourself so much with a character in a book that you took out a notepad and wrote a letter to the author. Viewed through that prism, My Salinger Year is not an ode to Salinger, but to the comfort of the printed word.