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"While men invoke the right toprivacy, women are erased fromhistory. Could "privacy" be tocontemporary female art what"obscenity" was to male writing of the

sixties? How can anyone describe alife without mention of the others whopass through it? The right of "privacy"is opposed to the right of someone topossess her own experience, make itsomething universal through her work.

So I was very interested in the pressaround Joyce Maynard's new book, AtHome in the World, a memoirchronicling a life that was greatlyshaped by the year she spent with J.D.Salinger. The privacy issue wasinvoked--how could she?--and thecharacters are epic: Maynard, whosegreatest crime is, according to therelatively sympathetic Irene Lachner(LA Times ), her "small talent," againstthe formidable Salinger, best knownthese days for his pursuit of privacy inCornish, New Hampshire.

Queasy and uncomfortable,

deceptively simple and well written, AtHome in the World reads like a casestudy of straight-girl ambition in theseventies. If we can admit thatstraight women failed, at least untilthe last two decades, to make muchimpact on the culture, shouldn't wetry to find the reasons? When JoyceMaynard was 18, in 1972, there werevery few models of powerful and lovedachieving women. The daughter oftwo bitter, underrecognizedintellectuals, precocious Joyce was

trained to be a talking dog, parlayingall her experience into bright andpleasing copy. And yet she wascuriously unprotected as a person or agirl. When 53-year-old Salinger comeson to her, following the publication ofher grandiose "An Eighteen Year OldLooks Back On Life" in the New YorkTimes Magazine, she's pushed by allthe adults around her to enter intothis liason.

And, understandably enough, she'shooked. Salinger says seductively thather writing "arouses affection." As sherecalls, Salinger uses words to talkabout her writing in the way "another

person might about more physical,sexual experiences." And that isperfect for her. Salinger's particularattraction sexualizes 18-year-old JoyceMaynard's mind, the only thing she'dever been recognized or praised for.

"Nobody," she writes, "suggests this isa bad idea or questions what might begoing on in the mind of a fifty-threeyear old man who invites an eighteenyear old to spend the weekend. (Butthen, my parents never seem torecognize the oddness or danger inmy hitchhiking , either.)" Like a greatmany serious young women of hergeneration, Maynard had to raiseherself. No one helped her reconcileambition ("male") with the alien stateof "femininity." At Home in the Worldreads like a companion piece to MaryPipher's penetrating Reviving Ophelia,a study of the painful and crosswiredcontradicitons that still plague

ambitious girls.

Although she avoids ever suggestingit, it could be argued that Salingerruined Maynard's life. At any rate, herencounter with him greatly shaped it.When Salinger projects himself intoher life, Maynard was living outsideher troubled, claustrophobic family forthe first time , and despite herannoying precocity, she was startingto make friends at Yale. Her writing

receives a phenomenal success,which, however fluky, she enjoys.Salinger draws her wholly into hisworld. She drops out of school (andnever finishes) to move in with him,loses all sense of continuity with herfriends. His attraction is a stream offantasy projections that stops withoutany explanation when her presencebecomes demanding and too real.Discarded and adrift at 19, she findsher self utterly derailed. Confidence isthe most precious asset, and the first

one lost by teenage girls. In the

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ensuing years she rethinkseverything. It's no surprise that afterher experience in Cornish, she leapsat the first promise of a "normal" lifeand marriage. Wich eventually

entailed supporting a family of fivewith her "small talent."

"Now (why only now?)," Hermione Leesniffs, questioning the timing of thismemoir in the New York Times. I takeJoyce Maynard at her word when shestates clearly in the introduction thatshe was moved, around herdaughter's 18th birthday , to writeabout her own experiences as a girl.

Every review of this book I've read inthe avalanche of press that'ssurrounded it is a review of Maynard'sperson. A few, like Katha Pollitt's inThe New York Times Book Review,approach compassion; the majorityare written with astonishing contemptand even hatred. Invariably, Maynardis compared to Monica Lewinsky. Butisn't there a difference betweenanswering questions under a grand

jury investigation and sitting down towrite a book? "A tawdry boudouirconfession...smarmy, whiny, smirkyand above all else, almostindescribably stupid," Jonathan Yardlywrites in the Washington Post. "Oh,that busy Maynard mouth," GerryHirshey sneers in Mirabella, referringto Maynard's only literal account ofthe painful and uneasy sex betweenthis 53-year-old man and 18-year-oldwoman. "Maynard lurches out of hericky , masturbatory eroticon shrieking

only Me, me, me."

Reviewers approach Maynard's workas if the purpose of autobiographywere only self analysis (whichinvariably she's faulted for) ratherthan the placing of an individual's

experience in a context of time. Noneof the dozen articles I have read fail tomention Maynard's encounter severalyears ago with her sister Rona, whodeclines to stay in the same housewith Maynard's family because,"you...take...up...so...much...space."

This is evidence, reviewers find, thatMaynard is lacking as a person, is "amajor piece of work." Obsession withher "character" and ethics" precludediscussion of the content or quality ofher book.

Not all autobiography is held to thesame standard. Take, for example, thejunkie memoir. Can anyone be moreself-absorbd than an addict? And yetreviews of Jerry Stahl's terrificPermanent Midnight and RichardHell's Go Now were all discussions ofthese men's books and not their

characters. As the late Kathy Ackerwrote about Cain's Book, "AlexanderTrocchi...taught me that writers do notmake up stories but attempt to findthe truth."

Hermione Lee laments the "betrayalof privacy," and yet the book thatMaynard wrote was about her ownlife, not J.D. Salinger's. Because she'snaming names in the writing of thisfirst-person memoir, she is

scrupulously respectful of theirautonomy as human beings. The onlymotivations that she probes or seeksto understand are her own. PaulAuster and Rob Bingham, both writingin the more legitimate genre ofcontemporary fiction, "fictionalize"past girlfriends by giving themdifferent names. The physicaldescriptions of these women, theirprofessions, verbal nuances, makethem immediately recognizable toanyone who knows them. But once

"transformed" into "characters" by a

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narrator who seeks to "understand"them, the most intimate details oftheir lives enter the public domain.First-person writing must always beaccountable. Fiction can be an act of

psychic rage.

"Women," Maynard says, "have hatedme."

Maynard's account of her months withSalinger, writes Elizabeth Gleick ofTime, "is full of all those key detailssympathetic girlfriendsrequire...Maynard turns out not tohave an introspective bone in herbody." Even Katha Pollitt, well awareof the negative press that women giveto other women, faults Maynard forfailing to understand her own story. "Ifshe seems like a 44 year old womanwho is still 18," she writes, "maybethat goes to show how deep thedamage went."

After finishing the book anddiscovering that she was by no meansthe only girl who passed through

Salinger's life, Maynard makes a finaltrip to Cornish. She wants to talk tohim, and asks what Gleick calls "atypically Maynardian question": whatwas my purpose in your life?"

No one picks up on a quote I find moretelling and disturbing, this timeSalinger to Maynard about a womanhe doesn't like: She has "a mouth likea cunt." "I can't stop thinking aboutit," Maynard writes. "Is my mouth like

that...? What does that mean? Whatkind of mouth is that?"

People do affect each other. I can'tthink of anything more legitimate toask.

http://www.joycemaynard.com/books-jmaynard/ahitw-the-nation.shtml