My time at the Agency and reading Salinger brought me back to that state when you’re a kid or an adolescent – or just a person! – who reads for pleasure. I was able to go back to the pre-academic me who fully understood the actual pure power of literature to change a person’s life, to guide a person through life, or to allow a person to live fully. And that really allowed me to become a writer.

Laura Miller talks with Joanna Rakoff about her new memoir, My Salinger Year, and the experience of reading Salinger’s fan mail having never read his books.