A revealing and thoughtful book. | At Home in the World: A Memoir

Pretty Not Bad | At Home in the World: A Memoir | Joyce Maynard

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	• At Home in the World: A Memoir Joyce Maynard Picador, 1999 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 147 reviews view larger image
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Excellent Read with Honesty and Insight

I just finished this book, and it is an amazing book where the author dares to speak the truth about her life, the good, bad and the ugly. I got interested in her after J. D. Salinger died. I had never read his book, Catcher in the Rye so I read that, this book, and the the Dream Catcher by his daughter, Margaret. Joyce Maynard's book speaks in a different way about Salinger but the profile for him is the same as I see presented by his daughter. I did not like his book; of course, I would think young people might get something out of it, but I was not the least impressed and would hope the youth could find something better to read. I think Salinger was a horrible person, I would have hated to have him for my father. Made me appreciate my father more than ever. But as for Maynard, she is a brilliant and good person. She truly loves her children and has tried to love everyone that has come into her life.It is a shame that she could not have met a man who truly loved her and could share her life. But all in all, she seems to have had a good life so far in spite of the bad things that have come her way.

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A revealing and thoughtful book.

I've been a fan of Joyce Maynard since her first book, "Looking Back". I am about the same age as Joyce so I have always related to her stories and love her writing style. I was faintly aware that she had been involved with Salinger, but bought the book to hear about her entire life more than just her time with him. I thought her story was interesting and I could relate at times with the stories about her family. I think she wrote about her time with Salinger fairly and honestly. There are many who have criticized her for telling about her time with him (as though he is above criticism in some way). I don't feel that she exploited him; he was simply part of her story, and obviously affected her life in countless ways. I really enjoyed this book.

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Pretty Not Bad

Joyce Maynard's book is normally cited for its description of the author's relationship with the reclusive J.D. Salinger when she was a teenager and he was a much older man. To me, that's too bad, because the author is a gifted writer and I quite enjoyed other parts of her book.

It's telling that the book jacket features a picture of herself with her mother, Fredelle Maynard, who a reader of the 70s might recognize as the author of many magazine articles, particularly features in "Good Housekeeping" which I read at about age 10-11. My mom had a subscription and I was always looking for new things to read. Even if I didn't understand some of the info in the magazine relating to "the pill" and "douching" and so forth yet, it seemed deliciously grown up to peruse. Interestingly, some of Fredelle Maynard's articles were about parenting - I particularly remember one on Fredelle's own supposed experiences dealing with rebellious teen daughters! After you read about Fredelle's life as portrayed through the eyes (and pen) of her daughter, it's pretty clear that Fredelle was not exactly a stellar parent, that she was too busy coping with the disappointments of her own life and maintaining a bit of a fake persona (including writing a regular feature on "My Problem and How I Solved It" for GH in which she researched problems like obesity, a husband losing his job, a teenage daughter getting anorexia, and so on, and then wrote an article in the first person like it was told to her by "anonymous"!). Feeling thwarted in her own writerly ambitions, Fredelle pushed Joyce to succeed and, like a stage mother, lived vicariously through her daughter. Joyce's father, who drank, seems to have been pretty ineffectual in and absent from her life.

So it is not surprising, given these two parents and their lack of providing Joyce with much of any guidance, that Joyce would wander off into the arms of Salinger, who seems to have had a fetish for romancing (via mail or, if he had the chance, in person) very young, bright girls who looked up to him and put up with his various kinks. By now most people have heard the story of how, after Joyce had a shocking first-person feature on college life published in the New York Times, Salinger started to write her letters (as he apparently did with other young women as well) and those letters eventually led to a relationship of some duration, with young Joyce moving in with old JD. I didn't have much sympathy for the guy given that he obviously had no sense of the damage that his behavior could cause, and indeed it seems that in Joyce's case he inflicted some hurt that she has had a hard time getting over. I'm sure there are many who would like to tell her to just grow up and get over it, but it seems likely that her naivete and sensitivity were qualities that drew Salinger to her rather than to a more sophisticated or tougher young girl who might have been able to shrug off or even laugh at his attentions.

A lot of college girls (me included) meet "older men" who pursue us in words and ways similar to Salinger's; they just don't happen to be famous, reclusive writers, so their patterns go unnoticed by all except their young girl targets. When girls get enough sense to start asserting themselves and calling the men on their behaviors, they are invariably cast aside and the man goes looking for another more malleable partner. It's not a big mystery that this happens and just because the fellow in this case wa was a famous writer (who idealizes and romanticizes very young girls in many of his stories to boot), doesn't mean it suddenly takes on a whole new reverential aura. Fortunately, Joyce doesn't give it one.

After the affair ends, Joyce seems to have a hard time getting her life back on the rails, although she does marry, have children and write books. This part of the memoir dragged a little bit, probably because the parts of the story with Fredelle and J.D. Salinger were much more psychologically deep and showed the formation of Joyce's character, and thus were more interesting.

For all the criticism Joyce got for writing this book and otherwise talking about her relationship with Salinger, I thought she was much kinder to him than she might have been, and that she did take soem responsibility both for getting herself into the situation and for having a hard time getting over it. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the complexities of the relationship between an ambitious mother and her daughter, as well as the Salinger tale.

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fascinating book

I wondered about her experiences with the author of "Catcher in the Rye" and I was fascinated with her account of her life as well as her experiences with said author.I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to anyone (especially young women)

UTTERLY EXHAUSTED

I just finished this book and I am utterly exhausted. It seems to me it should be subtitled "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Joyce Maynard--Everything, and Then Some". She's a great observer of life, and a very good writer. Why she wasted so much of her life thinking about and longing for Salinger, an author known to be weird and self-centered and paranoid, is anybody's guess. She certainly didn't need his praise; she received that in spades from her parents. The little waif pictured on the cover of the book invokes such sadness; hopefully she can move on .......

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In the spring of 1972, Joyce Maynard, a freshman at Yale, published a cover story in The New York Times Magazine about life in the sixties. Among the many letters of praise, offers for writing assignments, and request for interviews was a one-page letter from the famously reclusive author, J.D. Salinger.

Don't Go Away Sad is the story of a girl who loved and lived with J.D. Salinger, and the woman she became. A crucial turning point in Joyce Maynard's life occurred when her own daughter turned eighteen--the age Maynard was when Salinger first approached her. Breaking a twenty-five year silence, Joyce Maynard addresses her relationship with Salinger for the first time, as well as the complicated , troubled and yet creative nature of her youth and family. She vividly describes the details of the times and her life with the finesse of a natural storyteller.

Courageously written by a women determined to allow her life to unfold with authenticity, Don't Go Away Sad is a testament to the resiliency of the spirit and the honesty of an unwavering eye.

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