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My Salinger Year: A Memoir

Rakoff, Joanna

History

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Keenly observed and irresistibly funny, My Salinger Year is a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing. After leaving graduate school to pursue her dream of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. Precariously balanced between poverty and glamour, she spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office—where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and agents doze after three-martini lunches—and then goes home to her threadbare Brooklyn apartment and her socialist boyfriend. Rakoff is tasked with processing Salinger’s voluminous fan mail, but as she reads the heart-wrenching letters from around the world, she becomes reluctant to send the agency’s form response and impulsively begins writing back. The results are both humorous and moving, as Rakoff, while acting as the great writer’s voice, begins to discover her own.

Poignant, keenly observed, and irresistibly funny: a memoir about literary New York in the late nineties, a pre-digital world on the cusp of vanishing, where a young woman finds herself entangled with one of the last great figures of the century. At twenty-three, after leaving graduate school to pursue her dreams of becoming a poet, Joanna Rakoff moves to New York City and takes a job as assistant to the storied literary agent for J. D. Salinger. She spends her days in a plush, wood-paneled office, where Dictaphones and typewriters still reign and old-time agents doze at their desks after martini lunches. At night she goes home to the tiny, threadbare Williamsburg apartment she shares with her socialist boyfriend. Precariously balanced between glamour and poverty, surrounded by titanic personalities, and struggling to trust her own artistic instinct, Rakoff is tasked with answering Salinger’s voluminous fan mail. But as she reads the candid, heart-wrenching letters from his readers around the world, she finds herself unable to type out the agency’s decades-old form response. Instead, drawn inexorably into the emotional world of Salinger’s devotees, she abandons the template and begins writing back. Over the course of the year, she finds her own voice by acting as Salinger’s, on her own dangerous and liberating terms. Rakoff paints a vibrant portrait of a bright, hungry young woman navigating a heady and longed-for world, trying to square romantic aspirations with burgeoning self-awareness, the idea of a life with life itself. Charming and deeply moving, filled with electrifying glimpses of an American literary icon, My Salinger Year is the coming-of-age story of a talented writer. Above all, it is a testament to the universal power of books to shape our lives and awaken our true selves.

My Salinger Year

KNOPF

Living in crumbling Brooklyn apartments, holding down jobs as actors and writers and eschewing the middle-class sensibilities of their parents, graduates of the prestigious Oberlin College, Lil, Beth, Sadie, Emily, Dave and Tal believe they can have it all. When the group come together to celebrate a marriage,anything seems possible. But soon the reality of rent, marriage and family will test them all. For this fortunate age can't last for ever, and the group must face adulthood, whether they are ready for it or not. Sprawling and richly drawn, A Fortunate Age traces the lives of the group during some of the most defining years of modern America - from the decadence of the dot com boom through to the sobering events of September 11 and the trailing years that followed - this brilliant, ambitious debut novel perfectly captures the hopes, anxieties and dreams of a generation.

A Fortunate Age

Bloomsbury Publishing

This rich medley of stories, poems, and other writings features evocations of Chanukah by classic and contemporary authors includingSholom Aleichem, Nobel laureates S. Y. Agnon and Elie Wiesel, I. L.Peretz, Emma Lazarus, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Potok, Mark Strand, A. B. Yehoshua,Emma Green, Joanna Rakoff, and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. There are humorous as well as meditative tales from&nbsp;Israel, Central Europe, and the United States--works that capture the Festival of Lights as observed on Manhattan's Upper West Side alongside accounts of celebrations in shtetls of the Old Country and far reaches of the Diaspora including Africa. You'll find an abundance of sizzling latkes, spinning dreidels, blazing candelabras, and glittering gelt, together with intriguing commentary about the origins of the holiday and what it means now.

One for Each Night: The Greatest Chanukah Stories of All Time (A Very Christmas)

Literature & Fiction

Green, Emma

Potok, Chaïm

Yehoshua, A.B.

Agnon, S. Y.

Peretz, I. L.

STRAND, Mark

Herzl, Theodor

Lazarus, Emma

ALEICHEM, Sholom

Wiesel, Élie

GOLDSTEIN Rebecca Newberger

Literary

New Vessel Press

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