About this item

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.



About the Author

Joanna Rakoff

Joanna Smith Rakoff's novel, A Fortunate Age, was a New York Times Editors' Pick, a winner of the Elle Readers' Prize, and a selection of Barnes and Noble's First look Book Club. Like the characters in that novel, she attended Oberlin College, and she holds degrees from University College, London, and Columbia University. She's written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other publications. She lives in New York with her husband, son, and daughter.



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