JD Salinger and me: Joanna Rakoff on her extraordinary coming-of-age memoir of New York's literary world

The story of her year working for The Catcher in the Rye author's agent is one of the most highly anticipated books of the year – but Rakoff insists she never wanted to write it

• 
• • Rachel Cooke
  • The Observer, Sunday 1 June 2014

My Salinger Year author Joanna Rakoff at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Photograph: Jared Leeds for the Observer

Joanna Rakoff, author of the memoir all literary America is talking about, lives in a first-floor flat in a pretty but rather creaky clapboard house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its door release mechanism being somewhat temperamental, when I ring her bell one dank morning in May, she must skip downstairs to greet me – something she does barefoot, the skirt of her primrose broderie anglaise dress gathered girlishly in her hands. Rakoff, 42, is an acclaimed poet and novelist, an experienced journalist, and a mother of two. But at first glance, you would never know it. Wide-eyed, tentative and much given to confidences – her voice falls to an eager whisper when she's really dishing – she seems far younger than her years. "Would you like tea?" she asks, once we're safely upstairs and she is dancing busily between kitchen counter and refrigerator. Translated, what this means is: Be prepared: I've a lot to tell you.

It's hard to believe that her memoir, My Salinger Year, has not yet been published (it comes out this week). So much noise already surrounds it. "Girls meets Mad Men!" shouts her publisher, with only partial accuracy. For months, the emails have been pouring in. Will she write this or that piece? Will she appear on this or that radio show? The other day, she was photographed for American Vogue: stylist, hair, makeup, the lot. Naturally, all this has added greatly to her pre-publication nerves. "I didn't read any of the reviews of my first book [a novel called A Fortunate Age]. But that was relatively easy to do. This time, it will be harder. It's more personal, this book, and there is the issue of Salinger, too. He was one of the reasons I resisted writing it for so long. I didn't want to be seen as yet another person capitalising on his life, and I worry about being perceived that way even though I don't feel this is at all a story about Salinger." She sips her tea. "People love Salinger. They're ferociously devoted to him. So it's important that they understand that I'm not one of those who wants to take him down. He wasn't a psychotic weirdo. He wasn't this jerk, screaming at people in fits of temper like Sean Penn or something. He was kind, gentle, patient and respectful, and I wanted to convey that."
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