J.D. Salinger
Born: January 1, 1919, New York, N.Y.
Died: January 27, 2010, Cornish, New Hampshire
Ron Rosenbaum, of Esquire magazine when describing the solitary nature of J.D. Salinger wrote:
"It is not a passive silence, it is a palpable, provocative silence."
My Salinger Year,
by Joanna Rakoff spoke to a great fantasy of mine. While I do not
read romances with shirtless men on the cover, I am not without
special nooks and crannies in my imagination where the topic thrills me, and sends me off into delicious flights of fancy. What do I lust after in my heart, to quote President
Carter? I want to gobble up all I can about the New York literary scene.
Joanna Rakoff, at
the age of twenty-three, spent a year working at an esteemed literary
agency in the heart of the best of all literary worlds. What drew me
to the story right from the beginning was my abiding desire to step inside one of these establishments. My filing cabinets have folders holding rejection letters,
letters expressing interest, letters asking for the full manuscript,
and why I keep them all is a mystery to me. Writer's conferences
invite agents who are looking for new talent. Since they are the
gate-keepers to the publishing contracts, it behooves any writer to
learn something about the people who hold the keys to our kingdom.
Over the years, I have learned a few things about these agencies. For
one, they seem to stay in business. Two, they maintain the same
address, and three, they grow in the numbers of employees. Four, they
have graduate students and new-hires reading our query letters. Books
on how to approach literary agents and how to seek representation are plentiful.
Yet, as a voyeuristic and curious reader, I want to be right inside
and sitting at the desk. Joanna Rakoff did an
excellent job of putting me there. She writes about her year as an
assistant, in the nineties, at the old and venerable establishment
working for a woman holding the coveted post of agent for J.D.
Salinger.
The period of time
in my life where I gobbled every word written by Salinger, is still
fresh in my mind. Rakoff, well into her time in at the agency, still
had yet to pick up Catcher in the Rye. We know that Salinger is
reclusive and must be protected at all costs. His agent must shield
him from those who would make a pilgrimage to his front door. Rakoff
has the job of answering fan letters. It has always been an accepted
arrangement where a reader can write to a publisher if they want
to contact the author directly. The publisher would be duty-bound to
see that the mail reaches its intended recipient. Rakoff, given the
standard form letter, began to veer from that, and answer letters addressed to Salinger personally. Intrigued by the emotional impact his writing has on
the public, she finally reads Salinger's work and like so many
others, becomes a devoted fan.
There is such
clarity to Salinger's work that it seems he can write without effort.
Of course, that is not the case. His desire to keep distractions at
bay has always been admirable to me. Understandably, there are those
who would disagree. It is my contention that he deserved to be able
to do what he did best. Never, not for one day, did I imagine that he
was not continuing to write out there in Cornish, New Hampshire.
Perhaps the last sentence from Catcher in the Rye says it all:
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Perhaps the last sentence from Catcher in the Rye says it all:
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
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