Joanna Rakoff: “My year with Salinger”

Do you still have any of the fan letters?
“Yup. I still have the letter from the character known in the film and in the book as “The Winston-Salem Boy!” It’s in a box under my bed, and for many years I kept it pinned to the bulletin board above my office desk. That letter had a profound effect on me. ‘

How involved was she in adapting A year with Salinger?
“When I first met Philippe Falardeau, the director, he told me:“ If you choose me to adapt your book, you have to be prepared to be involved at every stage of the process. If, on the other hand, you just want to sell the rights and leave, you should choose someone else. “A statement that turned out to be absolutely true. Philippe and the producers hired me, from the beginning, as a consultant, so I read every draft of the script. , I suggested which characters to get rid of (my father, who has a big role in the book, had to go missing!). They even consulted me about casting. Margaret Qualley, in fact, was my first choice. Then the brilliant costume and production designers. they constantly kept me informed about the choice of costumes, I showed them some of my real clothes from 1996, which I still have, the phone I was using at the time, etc. So, I have been as involved as a writer who cannot direct the film alone”.

As you have seen Margaret Qualley in his shoes?
“Margaret, as I just said, has always been my first choice. We started casting castings in 2017, but Philippe and I both thought about a well-known star, a big name. Likewise, we wanted him to be no more than 26 (because I was 23 at the time). Then I started watching The Leftovers, where Margaret plays Jill, the extraordinarily wise daughter, and I thought, “She, her! I don’t know who she is, but she is perfect ”».

His experience in publishing has never been similar to that of The devil wears Prada?
“Not so much! After leaving the agency I took some time off, and then went back to work, part-time, for another incredibly nice agent, so I have never experienced anything like what is being told about it. The devil wears Prada. However, I worked for a very different type of horrible boss: an elderly man who had been convicted, in his previous job, of sexual harassment. The editors of the magazine I worked for knew this when they hired him, but they thought it wasn’t a big deal. The magazine employees, on the other hand, thought differently ».

What was New York like in the 90s?
“Oh my God, well, it was a lot of fun! I know it’s a cliché to say, but it was much darker and scarier, less tourist-friendly it would become Sex-and-the-City much, much later. Incidentally, when the series first aired my friends and I were incredulous at the girls’ looks, because we would never, ever wear stilettos, partly because we walked or took the subway. , but above all because we always wore shoes with which we could escape from a hypothetical attacker. But New York was very, very fun. It was a place where everything seemed possible, where you could fulfill your ambitions with a great deal of focus and grit. In my world there were painters, actors, dancers, musicians, sculptors, designers and so on, and I loved – so much – the conversations in which I found myself at certain dinners and at certain parties ».

Was it difficult to put everything in black and white?
“When I started writing the book, it felt like I was cheating on my former colleagues. The Agency has always cared about privacy and by writing the book I felt like I was exposing its secret world. I also found it difficult to write about the person known in the film as Karl and in the book as “my college boyfriend”, because leaving him seemed like the biggest mistake of my life. Eventually, I realized that I was writing this book with a loving gaze. I loved the Agency and everyone I worked with. And I loved Salinger. So I couldn’t have betrayed them in any way. ‘

Why has your book been so successful?
“I’ve thought about it a lot! When I agreed to write it, I was joking that maybe five people would read it. Today I think that perhaps there is something universal in the experience of getting by in the first job, without money and without the support of one’s parents. You ask yourself what you really want: “Security? Do I want to be comfortable and safe? Or do I want to do the hard thing? The inconvenient thing? ” Everyone struggles with these questions differently. And then there is romance. When I started writing the book, I thought I was the only person in the world who broke up with the love of his life for reasons he didn’t understand. When the book came out, I was flooded with cards in which readers would tell me similar stories. ‘

Is there a Salinger quote that you are particularly fond of?
“I still often go back to ‘The worst thing being an artist could do you is constantly making you a little unhappy.’ It is something that I have to remind myself from time to time: that being an artist means allowing yourself not to seek happiness at all costs, but to seek the truth ».