posted on 03 Apr 2016

My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff

I've developed a completely jaundiced and probably largely unfair impression that the world of publishing relies on a cohort of postgraduate young women with rich upper-middle class parents prepared to underwrite their internships and fund their social lives and central London rents. Although Joanna Rakoff's memoir is set in the New York literary world, when I started reading this I thought it was going to confirm all these prejudices and stereotypes. Happily, these initial impressions turned out to be completely wrong - what we have here is a genuinely engaging and really well written portrait of the work of a literary agency in the late 1990s and a glimpse into life living on a shoestring in Boho New York.

That's not to say that all the cast of characters are people you'd take unhesitatingly to your heart. The author doesn't name names (with a couple of specific exceptions ) but it probably wouldn't be hard to pin them down and quite a lot of them are monsters of one kind or another. It is really saying something when one of the most sympathetic people between the covers of this book is Salinger himself - someone renowned for raising being difficult to an art form.

Rakoff was 24 when she took a job with a literary agency in Manhattan and accepted a wage guaranteed to keep her on the poverty line. She soon moves in with Don, an aspirant novelist, and together they take occupancy of an apartment heated only by an oven and a kitchen with no sink. This is new school slum landlord territory.

It transpires that the agency Rakoff has joined is stuck in the 1950s with no computers and a way of doing business as antiquated as their decor. What it does have going for it is that it's the agency that launched and now supports the career of J.D.Salinger and this gives Rakoff a glimpse into something utterly unique. Not only does she have to learn how to fend off those in search of Salinger, she also has to answer his fan mail and take his eccentric calls to her boss.

The year that the memoir covers sees Rakoff grow in confidence and maturity both as a part of the agency and ultimately as the poet and creative writer she always wanted to be. Her personal life is a shambles - old friends fall away from her and she nurtures a deep-seated guilt about her parents and the boyfriend she betrayed in favour of the hateful and self-obsessed Don. I would defy anyone reading this book to not want to punch Don in face and it does seem extraordinary that Rakoff continues to forgive him even the most appalling insensitivity towards her, his thoughtless indolence and even turns a blind eye to his infidelities.

Ultimately however it is Salinger and the staff of the literary agency that really light up this book. This dysfunctional and eclectic melange behave like a family trapped in some odd time warp and deal with the comings and goings, deaths  and tragedies in a way that minimises the disturbances to the odd ritual behaviours they have developed. It was a treat to open the window on this world and take a good look inside - it's a place I most certainly will never get to see myself.

 

Terry Potter

April 2016