Items related to My Salinger Year: A Twelve-Month Memoir
Joanna Smith Rakoff was an office assistant in New York City working for a literary agent when she was handed the responsibility of replying to all correspondence written to the agency’s notorious client, J. D. Salinger.
She was supposed to inform the fans that Salinger would not accept letters and return the correspondence. But she felt a growing sense of Holden taking grasp of her—a growing familiarity with the life crises that prompted the queries—and, rather than brushing off the correspondents, Rakoff started posing as Salinger and supplying answers to strangers’ requests for advice. She wrote one girl to start studying harder if she wanted an A in English, to another woman that she was sorry about the loss of her daughter who’d so loved “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” The words of advice started flowing, and Rakoff’s alter ego started dispensing the advice as she imagined it would flow from the 80-year-old Zen Buddhist vegetarian himself, in an alternative world.
“Salinger, I thought, would have done the same thing. And so would have Franny, Zooey, Seymour, and Holden, certainly they would have. Franny, clutching her little cloth copy of The Way of a Pilgrim, would cry over these letters, would keep them in her overcrowded purse, folding and unfolding them until they fell apart at the creases.”
In the tradition of Nora Ephron, Steve Martin, and David Sedaris, Rakoff has created a bittersweet, hilarious tale that will win a huge national audience. This is the striking debut of a young writer and a nonfiction jewel for Salinger scholars.
She was supposed to inform the fans that Salinger would not accept letters and return the correspondence. But she felt a growing sense of Holden taking grasp of her—a growing familiarity with the life crises that prompted the queries—and, rather than brushing off the correspondents, Rakoff started posing as Salinger and supplying answers to strangers’ requests for advice. She wrote one girl to start studying harder if she wanted an A in English, to another woman that she was sorry about the loss of her daughter who’d so loved “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” The words of advice started flowing, and Rakoff’s alter ego started dispensing the advice as she imagined it would flow from the 80-year-old Zen Buddhist vegetarian himself, in an alternative world.
“Salinger, I thought, would have done the same thing. And so would have Franny, Zooey, Seymour, and Holden, certainly they would have. Franny, clutching her little cloth copy of The Way of a Pilgrim, would cry over these letters, would keep them in her overcrowded purse, folding and unfolding them until they fell apart at the creases.”
In the tradition of Nora Ephron, Steve Martin, and David Sedaris, Rakoff has created a bittersweet, hilarious tale that will win a huge national audience. This is the striking debut of a young writer and a nonfiction jewel for Salinger scholars.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Here is the story of a reader becoming a writer, of a young woman deciding who she will be, of the power of books. Here is a memoir that manages to be dreamlike but sharp, poignant but unsentimental. Here is a book I'm going to have to insist you read immediately (Maggie Shipstead, author of Seating Arrangements)
Joanna Rakoff is the literary world's Lena Dunham, both of them witty, sensitive, elegantly baffled, zeitgeist-hitting Brooklyn ladies of their respective half-generations (Sheila Weller, author of the New York Times bestseller, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon―and the Journey of a Generation)
This is an impossibly excellent read-a glowingly entertaining, miss-your-subway-stop engrossing, note-perfect piece of storytelling (Charles Bock, author of New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Children)
An utterly beguiling memoir, not only about Salinger and a bygone era of publishing, but about relationships, finding one's voice, and surviving in the big city (Caroline Sanderson Bookseller)
A warm, witty, occasionally sly piece of storytelling ... An affectionate love letter to a first job in an industry that in just 20 years has changed beyond recognition (Sam Baker Harper's Bazaar )
My Salinger Year's reference points, from the Brooklyn brownstones to the Danish pastries wolfed on the number 6 train to 51st Street, are all American, but the emotional landscape it conjures up will be just as true for readers on this side of the pond. Anyone who has struggled to find their bearings as an unworldly young adult will be deeply moved by it - I certainly was (Emma Hughes Country Life 2014-06-16)
This book is hard to put down. irresistible (Lucy Atkins Sunday Times)
Like a literary The Devil Wears Prada . an irresistible read (Harper’s Bazaar)
Anyone who has ever dreamed of a life in books will find much to love in Joanna Rakoff's memoir ... Funny and knowing, it's both an idiosyncratic tribute to Salinger's writing and an affirmation of the power of books to spark tectonic human connections (Metro)
Extraordinary ... Gripping and funny ... My Salinger Year is a treat even Jerry might have enjoyed (Rachel Cooke Observer)
Book Description:
Joanna Rakoff is the literary world's Lena Dunham, both of them witty, sensitive, elegantly baffled, zeitgeist-hitting Brooklyn ladies of their respective half-generations (Sheila Weller, author of the New York Times bestseller, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon―and the Journey of a Generation)
This is an impossibly excellent read-a glowingly entertaining, miss-your-subway-stop engrossing, note-perfect piece of storytelling (Charles Bock, author of New York Times bestseller, Beautiful Children)
An utterly beguiling memoir, not only about Salinger and a bygone era of publishing, but about relationships, finding one's voice, and surviving in the big city (Caroline Sanderson Bookseller)
A warm, witty, occasionally sly piece of storytelling ... An affectionate love letter to a first job in an industry that in just 20 years has changed beyond recognition (Sam Baker Harper's Bazaar )
My Salinger Year's reference points, from the Brooklyn brownstones to the Danish pastries wolfed on the number 6 train to 51st Street, are all American, but the emotional landscape it conjures up will be just as true for readers on this side of the pond. Anyone who has struggled to find their bearings as an unworldly young adult will be deeply moved by it - I certainly was (Emma Hughes Country Life 2014-06-16)
This book is hard to put down. irresistible (Lucy Atkins Sunday Times)
Like a literary The Devil Wears Prada . an irresistible read (Harper’s Bazaar)
Anyone who has ever dreamed of a life in books will find much to love in Joanna Rakoff's memoir ... Funny and knowing, it's both an idiosyncratic tribute to Salinger's writing and an affirmation of the power of books to spark tectonic human connections (Metro)
Extraordinary ... Gripping and funny ... My Salinger Year is a treat even Jerry might have enjoyed (Rachel Cooke Observer)
The Devil Wears Prada with a whiff of Mad Men and Girls - a charming coming-of-age memoir about a young woman who lands a job assisting J.D. Salinger's literary agent in the 1990s
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherGlobe Pequot Press
- Publication date2008
- ISBN 10 1599212889
- ISBN 13 9781599212883
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages256
- Rating
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