Book review

My Salinger year
My Salinger year is Joanna Rakoff’s second book. It is a story, her story, of a young person becoming a writer. In the late 1990s having achieved a Master’s degree in English but aware that she must start at the bottom Joanna sets of to find a niche in the literary establishment.
Literary house situations in her home town, New York, were scarce however she eventually wins a position in a venerable writer’s agency on the strength of being able to use a typewriter – which she had fortunately been taught at college some years previously. It transpired that the manager had interviewed many for the position all of who failed on this requisite
Joanna was taken aback at what she discovered. The once thriving agency had not kept up with the times there were none of the now normal equipment such as computers, scanners and copiers. All writing was still carried out on Selectic typewriters and client’s details were all on card files.
The company was run by an elderly, aloof, chain smoking lady manager.
Her surprise is expressed at the company’s former famous clients as shown by their books in the archive library including, as Joanne writes, ‘many foreign sounding names such as Ngaio Marsh’.
Joanne’s first days were taken typing outward correspondence related through bulky headphones from Dictaphone. Having proven her ability to do this a further task was added.
One of the Agency’s writers was the long retired JD Salinger who had become a very serious recluse. Despite his long retirement the Agency continued to get a steady stream of fan mail and also requests from universities for his telephone number. ‘
These received a standard reply; that Mr Salinger had instructed that no mail be forwarded’. Joanne’s new task was to read each letter , passing on any considered threatening to the police and typing out the reply to the rest. It was impressed upon her that she must not under any circumstance forward mail or reveal his telephone number.
From time to time a letter touched Joanne to the extent that she felt it deserved more than the standard cold reply. She took to adding a few comments to the odd reply – with interesting results.
Her story encompasses these along with her other experiences at the agency, her ardent socialist boyfriend and her slightly strange parents.
I’m not about to spoil the story by giving you more details. Suffice to say that it is an really interesting tale and extremely well written. it moves along at a nice pace and keeps to the main story . At 250 pages it is quite a slim volume, happily Joanne has resisted the temptation to pad it out with side stories.
A recommended read, available at the library.