At Home in the World: A Memoir Review

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(More customer reviews)Though not someone who has followed all of Joyce Maynard's career, I still found myself immersed almost from her opening paragraphs. There is a lot here, some disturbing, some thought-provoking, and always fascinating. I was surprised, as I was one who, almost on principle, felt J. D. Salinger's privacy, if it's so important to him, should above all not be violated. However, I realized as I went along, that this is really missing the point and is also implicitly saying that Salinger, as Great Writer, is more important than others in his life. But this IS Joyce Maynard's life, not J. D. Salinger's, though he does figure in her life for 10 months and she learned a great deal about herself from analyzing that relationship's hold upon her.
I do not see that she has exploited her relationship with him; I don't even see that she has particularly said horribly negative things about him, for that matter. I also feel that all the focus on this book as being about Maynard's sense of "victimization" by a "dysfunctional family" and an older man, J. D. Salinger, are simply way off the mark and totally missing the main points of her story. She does not portray herself as a victim and her self-analyses and self-criticism ring true as evidence of her having made some hardwon peace with her past and having reached a maturity that has often not seemed characteristic of her work in the past.
I also think there is a great deal more humor and a great deal more irony than people have generally been writing about in reviewing this book. The theme of authenticity vs. inauthenticity, for example, is an important one, whether one is critical of Maynard's narcissism or not. J. D. Salinger's own naricissism is fairly transparent in her story & obviously one of the reasons, coming from the family that she did, that he had such a hold over her. Ultimately, of course, his concern with authenticity and genuineness and purity are indeed compromised by the many things within himself that he doesn't wish to look at.
Actually, I thought she was quite kind about the relationship, as if she had taken responsibility for the part she played in getting involved with him in the first place.
A couple of interesting lines that keep coming back to me are "What purpose did I serve in your life" and her observation that she was . . . "one who had made the mistake of trying to live out fictions best left on the page," a common mistake of imaginative young people & we'd all be doing well to have accepted our past with the grace and wisdom she seems to have arrived at.

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