July 24 at 7PM, Joanna Rakoff—along with Edan Lapucki (author of California: A Novel)—will be reading at the Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street. I spoke by phone with Joanna about her latest book, a memoir about working at a literary agency with a very famous client…J.D. Salinger.

Brookline Hub: Did you have any trepidation about writing about such a huge literary figure as J.D. Salinger?  Why did you decide to write My Salinger Year now?

Joanna Rakoff: The idea for the book originated about ten years ago when I published an essay about reading Salinger’s fan letters. After the essay came out I had agents and editors approach me to turn the essay into a full-length memoir. I was cautious about it not because I would be writing about J.D. Salinger but because I was concerned the story wasn’t large enough to be a book. Then a few things happened: Salinger died (in 2010), I wrote another essay about Salinger for Slate.com, and I did a radio documentary about him for the BBC. The script for the documentary made its way to Random House UK and an editor there approached the producer and then my agent. After a long conversation with my agent and many walks on the highline (in Manhattan) I began to see the story. It was a long process to decide to write the book, but once I decided to do it the writing came easily to me!

BH: You write about a pivotal time in the world of book publishing—the mid-nineties, when computers and the Internet were creeping in, usurping the old world of typewriters, Dictaphones, and handwritten letters—when the romantic world of three-martini lunches at Café Des Artistes and close personal relationships between editors and agents morphed into the publishing world we know now—a business like any other. Looking back, do you think technology has helped or hurt the book world? Do you wish we could turn back the clock?

JR: I worked at the literary agency during the last dying gasp of that moment in publishing you describe. The conglomerates were swallowing up the last quasi-independent publishers. I’m not an expert on book publishing, but in my layman’s opinion the electronic age has both helped and hurt the industry. Publishers’ profit margins are down and they’re cutting corners—no more book launch parties or big book tours, where authors are put up in fancy hotels. But because of the Internet more people are reading and writing. I do think we’re still in transitional times.

I think the relationships between editors and writers are still strong. I’ve had two editors and I’ve been close with both of them. There is a sentiment among some that editors don’t edit anymore, but they do! People who work in book publishing, who get to positions of power like my editor at Knopf, they are brilliant, dedicated people who make big sacrifices and little money for their craft.

BH: Part of your job as an assistant at a literary agency was to read the hefty bundles of fan mail to J.D. Salinger, which ranged from touching to tragic to scary. Why do you think people are still so fascinated with Salinger, so many decades after his last book was published?

JR: He was a remarkable writer whose work touches a lot of people. Part of what makes his work so powerful is that he isn’t afraid to be emotional, to write about the force of the inner lives of his characters. Lots of writers look outward, but Salinger—to use a cliché—plumbed the depths of his characters’ emotional experiences.

A lot of the people who wrote to him were teenagers or had been through trauma. I think they like that Salinger is not an ironic writer, he’s an earnest writer.

In the mid-nineties when I was at the agency I think some dismissed Salinger’s work, especially people in Academia. At the time I also thought, how could someone so popular be good? But recently I’ve met some students on the academic tract who have done their honors thesis on Salinger—I think there has been a shift in opinion since he died.

BH: Do you think readers should make a conscious effort to separate the artist from the human being, or is who you are as a person inextricably linked to who you are as a creator?

JR: I think it’s unavoidable; you can’t fully separate an artist from his or her work. But the conflation can go too far.

BH: At one point in My Salinger Year, Salinger expresses interest in publishing one of his longer short stories with a small literary press. Why do you think, after years of shunning publication, he suddenly wanted to do this?In a related question, the recent biography Salinger by David Shields and Shane Salerno suggested that new work by Salinger will be released in 2015. Will you read it?

JR: This is just my opinion, but I think he might have been bored or lonely. Hapworth 16, 1924 (the name of the short story) was Salinger’s only short story not collected in a book. Orchises Press made a case that all of Salinger’s work should be available to readers. Maybe this is what convinced him. I think Salinger wanted a new project, he wanted to be in the world again. He seemed excited.

I will definitely read his new material. In fact I just read in Publishers Weekly that some of his earlier stories are being made available as an eBook (The Devault-Graves Agency’s digital imprint recently published J.D. Salinger: Three Early Stories, which “marks, according to Graves, the first [legally sound] book by Salinger to be published in 50 years, and the first Salinger writing legitimately available as an e-book and audiobook.”)

BH: To paraphrase a question you posed in your book, do you think publishing makes you a writer, or are you a writer simply because you write, even if it’s just for yourself (as Salinger did, for decades)?

JR: I did not call myself a writer until I made a living as a writer.

BH: Your previous book, A Fortunate Age, was a novel. How was your experience of writing creative nonfiction inMy Salinger Year different from that of writing fiction?

JR: It was difficult writing nonfiction. I had written magazine articles but a magazine piece doesn’t need a narrative arc. I had to go back and do research and interview people. I reread my favorite memoirs—like Poser by Claire Dederer, Wild by Cheryl Strayed, and Blue Nights by Joan Didion. I didn’t want a navel-gazing type of memoir. I wanted it to read like a novel. I had to make some difficult choices about what to trim.

BH: What do you have planned for the Brookline Booksmith event?

JR: I’m going to read a couple of sections from the book that are about Salinger. I’m really excited to be reading with Edan Lapucki. She’s a fantastic writer. We both went to Oberlin—though not at the same time—and we both have had our ups and downs as writers. I love her new book and I’m thrilled to be doing the event with her.

 

—By Jennifer Campaniolo