Answering Salinger's mail

J.D. Salinger would not have liked Joanna Rakoff's 2014 memoir My Salinger Year, but I did.

Salinger, like Harper Lee a remarkable writer driven into seclusion by the pressure of early success, was known for his strict control over his life, his privacy, his books and everything else he could control. And because his books have sold so many copies, he had lots of control. Much of that control was exercised through his New York literary agent, who so catered to him that she resisted installing computers and other modern technology in her office. Salinger preferred typewriters.

Rakoff, an aspiring poet eager for a start in New York literary circles, took a job as assistant to that agent. Soon she found herself opening Salinger's mail and sending back form letters explaining that the author did not want to read his mail, talking with him frequently on the telephone and, on one occasion, actually meeting him and shaking his hand when he showed up at the office.

In the fall of 2002, Rakoff wrote an article for Book magazine also called "My Salinger Year," which essentially boiled the book's contents down to four pages. Did it really take her more than a decade to write the complete memoir? Or is it indicative of Salinger's influence that it was necessary to wait until after his death in 2010 to get it published? And although she named the literary agency (Harold Ober Agency) in her article, she just calls it the Agency in her book. Did his influence extend even beyond his death?

Rakoff says she got tired of copying form letters (the office had no copy machine) and so began replying to the letters from Salinger's fans herself, something that would have angered Salinger if he had found out about it. But, of course, he never read his mail.

When not focusing on Salinger, Rakoff writes about her private life, about surviving in New York City on a pitiful salary, living with a leftist boyfriend who imagines himself a great writer (she knows better) and trying to make decisions about her future.

Her memoir turns from interesting to fascinating when she finally gets around to actually reading Salinger's books, something she had avoided in the past, in part, because her parents liked them. She loves them, especially Franny and Zooey (my own favorite). Now she rereads his books every year. Her comments about Salinger's work are glowing. ("Salinger was brutal," she writes. "Brutal and funny and precise. I loved him. I loved it all.") Even so, he wouldn't have liked it.