Author Joanna Rakoff discusses best-selling memoir at annual Miriam Levine reading

By Sarah Daponde Asst. Arts & Features Editor The annual Miriam Levine reading, hosted by the English Department, featured bestselling author Joanna Rakoff on April 2 in the Heineman Ecumenical Center. Lisa Eck, professor and department chair of the English Department, introduced the event and welcomed attendees. “It’s illegal to be bored as an English major,” said Eck. Eck said the event was held annually to inspire students to go beyond creative writing classes and into the next steps of writing and publishing. She said she wants students to have the courage to put their voice out into the world. She then invited Jennifer De Leon, an English professor and friend of the author’s, to introduce Joanna Rakoff. “It’s a special day when a student can meet a real-life author - especially one so talented,” said De Leon. She said Rakoff was a winner of the Goldberg Prize for fiction, has had her work published in 20 different languages, and has been featured in the publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vogue. “My Salinger Year,” Rakoff’s best-selling memoir, was adapted into a movie in 2021, added De Leon. Her newest memoir, “The Fifth Passenger,” is about a secret in Rakoff’s family. De Leon said Rakoff is always sharing tips and connections to help fellow writers. “Joanna is the most generous writer I know. “To be in the presence of Joanna - or her art - is to be around a good friend.” Rakoff then took the stage. She said she was familiar with Levine’s work and that it was a pleasure to be this year’s reader. She encouraged attendees to read Levine’s poetry, saying, “It’s always a wonderful thing.” Rakoff was also a judge for this year’s Howard Hirt Literary Awards for Prose, a writing contest hosted for FSU students, she said. “So impressed by the maturity of the work and the incredible sophistication … of the students,” Rakoff said. “I was kind of a loser when I was a senior in college,” she added. She said she began her writing journey as a poet, but was unsure of what she wanted to do with her writing. “I was not sure what I wanted to do with a lot of things that interested me. I just wanted to do big things,” Rakoff said. She said she wanted to have a “remarkable life,” but was reluctant to take any big risks. “I knew that I wanted to do something creative and I secretly wanted to become a writer,” she said. Rakoff said she originally never wanted to publish a memoir. She was a private person and came from a family in which secrecy was a big part of their culture. Thinking the safest way to be a writer was to wait until she was an English professor with tenure to publish, Rakoff said she went to study for her master’s degree in London. But one day, she said she spontaneously left school and went back home to her parents’ house. From there, a friend got her involved in a film project at Columbia University. A movie was being shot, featuring Barbara Streisand. She said she thought she would be interested in screenwriting, but ended up hating it. She was working 21-hour days and everyone was stressed, said Rakoff. After finishing with the film industry, Rakoff said she “stumbled into” publishing. Her friend worked at Random House and, one day at a party, Rakoff asked her if she liked her job. “And she sort of took this to mean, ‘get me a job in publishing,’” she added. “Next thing I knew, I had a job in publishing,” said Rakoff. She then read an excerpt from “My Salinger Year,” which took place in 1996 when she was 23 years old. The memoir was written about her position at a literary agency where she worked as an assistant. The agency was an unusual place to work, said Rakoff. There were dim lights and everyone used typewriters and drank whiskey. “It was not an unusual place if you were a character in ‘The Great Gatsby,’” she added. Reading from her memoir, Rakoff said on her first day of work, her boss told her that people would frequently call and ask her for Jerry’s home address and phone number - and to never tell any of them Jerry’s home address or phone number. “I had no idea who Jerry was,” said Rakoff. “This was 1996 and the first Jerry that came to mind was Jerry Seinfeld,” she added. Rakoff said it was not until she read the names of the books that had been published by authors represented by the agency that she realized Jerry was J.D. Salinger. Salinger stopped answering his own fan mail and the task then fell to Rakoff, she said. “One day, the office manager came over to me with these giant bundles of letters - I mean, truly giant - and dumped them on my desk,” Rakoff said. She then read another excerpt from her memoir about answering this fan mail, beginning, “the cover, the font, the binding…” Rakoff said her boss told her many times Salinger would never call her personally. She said one morning she picked up the phone and heard someone shouting, “Hello?” to her repeatedly and then finally, “It’s Jerry!” Rakoff asked the audience if they had read Salinger’s work and if they liked it, which got a mixed response of nods and head shakes. She then opened the room up to questions. One attendee said he loved her sense of humor and asked her what her topmost tip for getting published was. She said she was asked to do a panel earlier this year where she talked more about her road to being published. “If you are … just writing your best work, you’re probably going to get published,” said Rakoff. The trouble comes in when someone is trying to publish their work for the wrong reasons, such as wanting to publish to get famous, she added. “I think the desire to publish has to come from an ingrained - almost DNA-level - need to be part of a cultural conversation,” Rakoff said. “There are much easier ways to be famous - you could be on ‘The Bachelorette,’” she added. She said her road to writing her memoir began with journalism, writing for magazines and newspapers. She added that she wrote for “an obscure newspaper that you may or may not have heard of called The New York Times.” Rakoff said journalism taught her to write objectively. She said she published an essay about answering Salinger’s fanmail and many editors asked her to turn it into a book. “I said no,” Rakoff added. Her agent agreed with her and said she should focus on the novel she was currently writing instead. She said her agent told her, “You don’t want to be known as the Salinger Girl.” Rakoff said she was interviewed by newspapers and magazines about her essay after Salinger passed away. “So I was still known as the Salinger Girl,” she added. Rakoff said the BBC then asked her to turn her short essay into a radio documentary and convinced her by agreeing to help her find out the identity of someone who had written Salinger an anonymous letter she thought was “wonderful.” She said the documentary took her nine months to make and the script she had written for it was circulated in the British publishing industry. A publisher from Random House contacted her and asked her to turn it into a book, she said. Rakoff said no again, but the publisher persisted. He met with her agent and her agent urged her to finally write the book, she said. Still being reluctant, Rakoff’s editor told her to write 20 pages and then decide. “And so I did, and I was like, ‘this feels good and I’m ready,’” Rakoff said. “I’m like the reluctant memoirist.” She said the tone and style of the book fell into place and she was able to write it over a period of six months. “Sometimes, we feel like we have to sit down every day and write 1,000 words … but sometimes, things are happening in our brain and … it just comes out fully formed because you’ve been working through it without realizing,” Rakoff added. At the end of the event, attendees were invited to purchase copies of “My Salinger Year” and “The Fifth Passenger,” and Rakoff was available for signing.