My Salinger Year

J.D. Salinger didn’t write to be read – or seen. The author of The Catcher in the Rye stopped publishing in 1965 – but continued writing until his death 45 years later –, and long before that he had made up his mind to refuse to allow film adaptations of his work (a non-acceptance that has miraculously survived him).

As a result, the lazy and the uncreative have had to find alternative avenues for profiting from Salinger's work. The most recent example of this is My Salinger Year, a drama written and directed by Philippe Falardeau, based on Joanna Rakoff's memoir of the same name.

In 1995, Joanna (Margaret Qualley), an aspiring writer and poet, moves to New York, where she gets a job at one of New York's oldest literary agencies. Unbeknownst to Joanna, the agency looks after the interests of notoriously reclusive writer J. D. Salinger (additionally, she moves into an apartment with her new boyfriend, who is writing a novel, which, when finished, fits perfectly inside a thin manila envelope; I’d venture that perhaps the envelope contains a flash drive with the book in it, but this is the mid-90s, after all).

Joanna's duties include responding to Salinger's voluminous fan mail. According to agency policy, Joanna replies with a generic formula explaining that Salinger does not read fan letters (and if the letters were anything like the ones in the movie, he wasn't missing much – and neither were we). She, however, becomes tempted to write back something with a little more substance to certain Salinger fans – though not having read any of his work (not even Catcher), it’s hard to tell what led her to believe she was qualified to become Salinger’s self-appointed mouthpiece.

The only reason the writer's last name appears in the title of this movie is to lure unsuspecting viewers into watching it in hopes of learning something valuable about Salinger. As it turns out, though, the plot has little or nothing to do with the author (and it isn’t even clever enough to be a pastiche like Igby Goes Down) except a perverse eagerness to pry into and exploit his two most valued possessions: his privacy and his art.

Consider this: in May 1986, Salinger discovered that British writer Ian Hamilton intended to publish a biography that made extensive use of letters Salinger had written to other authors and friends. Salinger sued to stop publication of the book, and in Salinger v. Random House, the court ruled that Hamilton's extensive use of the letters, including quoting and paraphrasing, was not acceptable as the author's right to control publication overrode the right of fair use.

It doesn't take a genius to conclude that Salinger wouldn't be much happier with a book and film based on correspondence that he didn't read – let alone replied to –, starring a character who has deliberately avoided the author’s oeuvre, because she wants to be “provoked,” not “entertained.” All things considered, My Salinger Year is neither provocative nor entertaining.