At Home in the World: A Memoir by
Joyce Maynard
Riveting Read, Heartfelt And Swift
Joyce Maynards memoir At Home in the World is an attempt to make
peace with herself. At times, however, its hard not to see it as an act of
war--on her parents and, most notably, on J.D. Salinger. Maynards
account of her year-long relationship with the reclusive writer is the
centerpiece of the book and the publicity pivot on which it turns. And how
not? She first encountered Salinger when he wrote her a fan letter
following her world-weary but not necessarily wordly wise New York
Times Magazine cover piece, An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life.
He was then 53 and, as Maynard paraphrases, wanted her to know that I
could be a real writer, if I would just look out for myself, as no other person
is likely to. By the time she was 19, she was living with the increasingly
controlling Salinger and doing her best to adhere to his regimens, from
homeopathy at any price to a mostly macrobiotic diet heavy on frozen
peas. (Lamb burgers, formed into patties and then frozen--before being
cooked at a dysentery-friendly 150 degrees--also figure heavily.)
Whats worse, he does his best to turn the hugely driven young woman into
a mistrusting, publicity-shy prig, not to mention helping her perfect her
already anorexic bent. Maynard is such a skilled writer that its hard not to
take her side as the relationship falters. In fact, even when its going well,
its not easy to sympathize with a man whose idea of an endearment is, I
couldnt have made up a character of a girl Id love better than you. But
Maynard is as hard on her younger self as she is on the great man.
Though she had published intimate essays since her early teens, and long
been feted for her honesty, it has taken the overachiever many years to
realize that she had carefully left out her most personal burdens--her
fathers alcoholism, her mothers nighttime snuggling and overwhelming
intrusions, the distance between her and her older sister. Still, At Home
in the World is more than a clearing-house for past parental and amorous
wrongs. Its a cautionary tale about using language and the pretense of
truth to obscure key realities. One of the many curiosities in this
discomfiting book? Salinger dreamt that he and Maynard had a child
together: I saw her face clearly. Her name was Bint. The World War II
veteran then looks up the word. What do you know, he says. Its archaic
British, for little girl. Maynard never, even now, has questioned his
definition. In fact, its slang, used especially in World War II, for prostitute.
When Salinger forced the 19-year-old to clear her things out of his New
Hampshire house, she was still unaware of the words force. On the

window of Jerrys bedroom, where the glass is dusty, I write, with my
finger, the name of the child we had talked about: BINT. --Kerry Fried
Personal Review: At Home in the World: A Memoir by Joyce
Maynard
Forget any news you've heard about this, and simply start reading it for the
grand achievement that it is - a heartfelt memoir of a precocious young
female writer who grew up sheltered in New Hampshire, was one of the
first women to attend Exeter, was driven, smart, silly, shy, very concerned
about the world, and (as often happens) fated to not quite fit in...
and who suddenly, at the impressionable age of 19, was lured to live with
an older famous male author, and she thought she finally, for once, had
found her place to fit in.
And then, she suddenly lost it and went tumbling into confusion.
Joyce Maynard is an exceptional story-teller, writer, and memoirist. In
memoir-writing, the most important detail is NOT what you put in as much
as what you leave out - you have to sort through a thousand incidents and
keep out the melodrama while finding the small details that show rather
than tell.
When Joyce Maynard talks about the letters she writes to magazine
editors as a teenager to try to get published, the way her mother taught
her; when she writes about how she spelled "penis" wrong in an essay
about sex; when she describes the little-girl dress she wears the first time
she meets her future lover J.D. Salinger, when she describes the sound of
the racecars zooming after he tells her he doesn't want to have children
with her -- these seemingly minor details tell us so much about how she
felt at the time, and about the dark blessing of being "discovered" at 19.
This is simply Joyce Maynard's poignant coming-of-age story, and there
are no superfluous details. It's not written in a salacious way. However,
when reviewers found out she was writing such a book, they went ballistic -
after all, it might end up as a tell-all about J.D. Salinger, and it might also
just be an attempt by Maynard to make money off of his name. There was
some reason to believe it could turn out that way: She definitely had spent
a lot of her life writing about herself (then again, that's what you do when
you are destined, first by the adults around you, then by your inner voice,
to become a writer, and you drop out of college to do so.)
But it's never salacious. It includes only the details that are relevant to
Maynard's feelings, story, and life. It is a wonderfully written both that will
make you sometimes proud, sometimes sad, sometimes shocked. It also
tells of the very subtle dangers of exploitation. To me, it made me feel a
little better about being a writer, but I don't know if everyone would get that
out of it. It definitely didn't make me feel better about a certain male author

whose writing I love, but that's the breaks. (And yes, I know it's only her
side.)
An added bonus is the bit of "journalistic" research Maynard does at the
end...there is kind of a bombshell in it, one that the newspapers seemed to
prefer not to talk about while excoriating her. Again, it's her side, and we
all must keep that in mind. Still, it's an extremely well-written memoir that
she probably couldn't have written until she'd attained the proper distance.
For one brief shining moment, this bright young woman had thought, at 19,
that she had everything set for the rest of her life - and then her
lover/newfound idol suddenly sent her away. Even if it wasn't a famous
reclusive male author, the story would definitely be worth telling.
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