Joanna Rakoff - My Salinger Year

That was the point at which my husband found me sobbing, loudly, phlegmily, haplessly trying not to wet the pages of this book that had passed from my father’s hand to my mother’s and now to mine.

Salinger’s stories, to a one, are anatomies of loss, every inch of them, from the start to the finish. Even Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters —one of the funniest stories in the English language—is soaked with the fact of Seymour’s death, Seymour’s suicide. Seven years later, Buddy is still mourning. Even Catcher is ultimately a portrait in grief: Holden’s madness has all to do with his brother Allie’s death. And Franny is not pregnant. She’s in mourning. As is the entire Glass family. A family in mourning, never to recover. A world in mourning, never to recover.

My husband stared at me, shocked, from the doorjamb. “This is about your dad, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s making you think about your dad. About what’s going to happen.” My father, we knew, was not going to recover. He would grow worse and worse, until he couldn’t move and couldn’t talk, and then: the end. “It’s reminding you of your dad.”

With the back of my hand, I wiped the tears from my face and swiped my nose. “No,” I said. “It’s just about Salinger.”

My most profound thanks to: Jordan Pavlin, Tina Bennett, Stephanie Koven, Kathy Zuckerman, Caroline Bleeke, Svetlana Katz, Nicholas Latimer, Brittany Morrongiello, Katie Burns, Sally Willcox. Thank you to everyone at Knopf, WME, and Janklow & Nesbit.

Thank you to Allison Powell and Carolyn Murnick, to Joanna Hershon, Stacey Gottlieb, and Abby Rasminsky for such insightful early reads. To Lauren Sandler, for everything. To Kate Bolick, Evan Hughes, Adelle Waldman, Matthew Thomas, Dylan Landis, and, most of all, Charles Bock.

Thank you, also, to the wonderful editors and producers with whom I worked on the pieces that evolved into this book: Jeffrey Frank, John Swansberg, James Crawford, David Krasnow. And thank you to Slate , BBC Radio 4, and Studio 360 .

Thank you, thank you to PEN for providing the funding that allowed me to finish this book. To Ledig House for a place to work, and to Ofri Cnaani and Claire Hughes for the same. To Paragraph, where most of this book was written, and to Joy, Lila, Sara, and Amy.

Thank you to Kenneth Slawenski and Ian Hamilton, whose impeccable research filled holes in my knowledge of Salinger’s life.

Thank you to Claire Dederer, Cheryl Strayed, and Carlene Bauer for examples of what a memoir can be, and straightforward guidance about writing one.

I am enormously grateful, of course, to the Agency for giving me the best first job a girl could have, and to my boss and the person known in these pages as Hugh for teaching me more than I ever could have hoped to learn about books, business, literature, and, yes, life. Also thank you to the person known in these pages as Lucy.

Thank you to Henry Dunow, Anne Edelstein, Jen Carlson, Corinna Snyder, and Chris Byrne. Thank you to Roger Lathbury, Robert Anasi, and Billy Bano.

Thank you to Coleman and Pearl.

This book would not exist were it not for the generosity, support, and editorial acumen of Amy Rosenberg. Thank you.

Keeril: There are no words.

Joanna Smith Rakoff is the author of the novel A Fortunate Age , which won the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers and the Elle Readers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Pick and a San Francisco Chronicle best seller. As a journalist and critic, she has written for The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe, Vogue, Time Out New York, O: The Oprah Magazine , and numerous other publications. Her poetry has appeared in The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, The Kenyon Review , and other journals. She has degrees from Columbia University; University College, London; and Oberlin College and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

A Fortunate Age

Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Rakoff

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Rakoff, Joanna, 1972–

My Salinger year / by Joanna Rakoff.—First edition.

pages cm

“This is a Borzoi book”—T.p. verso.

ISBN 978-0-307-95800-6 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-307-95801-3 (eBook)—1. Rakoff, Joanna, 1972–2. Authors, American—21st century—Biography. 3. Literature publishing—United States—History—21st century. I. Title.

PS3618.A437Z46 2014

818′.603—dc23

[B]

2013026931

Front-of-jacket photograph by Gail Albert Halaban

Jacket design by Peter Mendelsund and Oliver Munday

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