My Salinger Year

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