Salinger-related article in Sept/Oct 2002 BOOK magazine

I wanted to mention an odd little article in the September/October
issue (on the newsstands now) of BOOK magazine, on page 58. Entitled
"My Salinger Year," it is by Joanna Smith Rakoff and is a tale of a
year (1996) when she worked for the Ober Agency and was given the task
of replying to people who wrote to Salinger c/o Ober. It's an
amusing, depressing, sort of flat little story about someone who is
paid to sit in the skin of JDS and answer (some of?) his mail.

She doesn't pretend to be him, though she admits that the idea to
impersonate him crossed her mind. Instead, she explains to people who
contact Ober how JDS doesn't accept letters from readers, and she
improvises little responses to the people who want to meet Salinger,
want to be Holden, want to be LIKE Holden, and want to be like Salinger.
At least once she meets JDS when he makes a trip down to the city to visit
his agent, to make sure that nothing changes about anything, including
the appearance and presentation of his printed work. She says he is
now mostly deaf and that he thrives on routine. She gets back some angry
answers from people who can't understand her or what she does and who are
bitter that their letters won't be passed along. (To give her credit,
even she sometimes doesn't understand why she does what she does, except
that it's a job, and, like most of us, she needs a job. She refers to
the experience as "My Salinger Year" when she tells people about it,
because she herself tried then, and still seems to be trying now, to make
sense of it and of what she was doing with the work and with herself.)

It's an eccentric and quirky article that is worth the effort to read.

The magazine has a web site at www.bookmagazine.com. I had a quick --
a very quick -- glance at the web site and don't seem to find any hint
of the article, so you might indeed need to go check it out at your
local newsstand (at least if you're in the U.S; I saw my copy at
Barnes & Noble) or bookstore. Based on my look at the web site, I
would guess that it hasn't yet been updated to reflect the latest
issue. The cover on the present web site as of today (August 21,
2002) shows last issue's cover. So, check back again in a few weeks,
I guess.

I don't know what you'll find; I admired the article, but at the same
time I thought it kind of depressing, though that might be because I
imagined myself working in that place, without even having a computer
that could churn out the canned replies she did. Instead, she had to
answer everything by hand on an old typewriter, the kind of daily task
that, for me, would be enough to make me want to cut my throat.

Based on what I was able to find, it appears as if Rakoff has moved on
to more rewarding work teaching and working with apprentice writers.
It's an odd and sad little story she tells of 1996, and well worth the
time if you can come upon it.

If I find an online copy, I'll pass the URL along. I know that
magazines like this are often hard to find, both in the U.S. and
outside the country.

Cheers,

--tim o'connor

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Received on Wed Aug 21 18:15:31 2002