Looking Back (22 page)

I
T IS THE NEW YEAR
now. (I rang it in with popcorn and Guy Lombardo, sad to see that even the seemingly ageless Royal Canadians had compromised to sound contemporary,
with-it.
) I’m sitting by a window in New Hampshire—I have left Yale, Chaucer classes and dormitory bunk beds for the mountains—watching the evening grosbeaks crowded at the bird feeder. They are ugly-natured birds who scare away the chickadees, but nice to look at, fighting over sunflower seeds and suet, winging away at the least sound or movement from me in my chair. The wind is strong right now—just about sunset; the temperature reads eight degrees below zero. In here, though, I am warm. The fire is laid, although not burning (old
TV Guides,
this morning’s New York
Times
and dripping, snowy logs), the dog wheezes in a back room (old and asthmatic, he hibernates in winter, dreaming of a badger-hunting spring) and a tangerine peel, filled up with seeds, sits on the table next to me. The television set is off—nothing but golf tournaments and football games this Sunday afternoon—so I have played Monopoly, putting hotels on every property I owned, and won. The winning matters still. I count my paper money like a miser, rejoice beyond all reasonable proportions when I take in another hundred. I’m thinking what I’ll have for dinner, scribbling in the margins of my yellow legal pad, examining the split ends of my hair, watching the sky change colors, checking my watch, the
TV Guide,
the temperature again. The bird feeder is empty now.

I have just finished reading my manuscript. I’ve come out here, to this chair, this window, with this yellow pad, to write the ending to this book. Before me is a list of topics to tie up in some fine and final-sounding paragraph. Now is the moment, maybe, to quickly, deftly plug in gaps—things about my parents that should be here and aren’t, about my best friend, next-door neighbor Becky, my one real high school boy friend, the year at Exeter I barely mention. I should perhaps temper my statements with apologies, for saying “we” all through this book, when there are so many people I’ve no right to speak for (where are the blacks? the teen-age dropouts? the people of my generation who read—really read—books? I cannot speak for them). I need an ending, something that will tie in air-raid drills and Dr. Kildare shows and fifth-grade facts-of-life talks and college board tests and debutante balls, some statement that will make my scattered thoughts seem pointed all in one direction, toward a single, nineteen-sixties summing-up conclusion, some idea that will conceal the fact that when I wrote this book I had no notion of what all the pieces would add up to. But any generalization I make now would be more than a bit contrived because, like yearbooks and Sears catalogues, one’s memories rarely have shape and form and (high school English) Main Ideas. Ten years can’t be summed up; a generation can’t be generalized about.

So I’ll say one more thing, just for myself, about the dog and the red-breasted nuthatch and the chickadees and even the grosbeaks, also the home-grown summer squash and peas I’m about to thaw from the freezer for dinner, and the fields where, last August, I picked them. The plants and animals are the telling omissions in my recollections of the decade—too many passing fads, too little that is lasting. I will resist my debater’s instinct to end with a ringing phrase. It’s suppertime.

Joyce Maynard is the bestselling author of eleven books of fiction and nonfiction. She is best known for her memoir
At Home in the World
and her novel
Labor Day
, both bestsellers. Since launching her writing career as a teenager, Maynard has been a commentator on CBS radio, a contributor to National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and a reporter for the
New York Times
, as well as a speaker on parenthood, family, and writing. She has published hundreds of essays and columns for publications such as
Vogue
;
More
;
O, The Oprah Magazine
; and the
New York Times
; in addition to many essay collections.

Born in Durham, New Hampshire, in 1953, Maynard began publishing her stories, essays, and poems when she was fourteen years old. She won numerous awards for her work before entering college at Yale University in 1971. During her freshman year, Maynard sent examples of her work to the
New York Times
, prompting an assignment: She was to write an article for them about growing up in the sixties. In April 1972 that article, “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life,” graced the cover of the magazine, earning her widespread acclaim and instant fame.

Maynard’s story also caught the eye of reclusive author J. D. Salinger, then fifty-three years old, who wrote her a letter praising her work—launching a correspondence that ultimately led Maynard to drop out of college and move to New Hampshire to live with the author. Their relationship lasted ten months.

Maynard never returned to college. In 1973 she published her first memoir,
Looking Back
, a follow-up to her
New York Times Magazine
article published the year before. Having lived alone in New Hampshire in her early twenties, in 1976 she was offered a job as a reporter for the
New York Times
and moved to New York City. She left the newspaper in 1977 when she married Steve Bethel and returned to New Hampshire. The couple went on to have three children: Audrey, Charlie, and Wilson.

Maynard’s first novel,
Baby Love
, published in 1981, earned the praise of several renowned fiction writers including Anne Tyler, Joseph Heller, and Raymond Carver. Her next book,
Domestic Affairs
(1987)—a collection of her syndicated columns, which had run in newspapers across the country—reflected on her experiences as a wife and mother and further cemented Maynard’s status as one of the best-loved modern American memoirists.

In 1986, an area in Maynard’s home state of New Hampshire was selected by the US Department of Energy as a finalist to become the first-in-the-nation high-level nuclear waste dump. Maynard was one of the organizers of the resistance to that project, and she wrote a cover story about it that was published in April of that year and was widely believed to have contributed to the government’s decision to suspend the nuclear waste dump plan.

Maynard’s marriage ended in 1989—an experience she wrote about in her “Domestic Affairs” columns. Many major newspapers discontinued the column abruptly at this point, citing Maynard’s impending divorce as indication that she was no longer equipped to write about family life. Maynard continued writing—though for a much smaller audience—in the
Domestic Affairs Newsletter
.

In keeping with her practice of communicating actively with her readers, Maynard established a website in 1996; she was one of the first writers to do so, and she was a regular and visible presence through the brand-new technology of her site’s discussion forum.

Forbidden by Salinger to speak of him, Maynard chose to remain silent about their relationship for twenty-five years, until her daughter turned eighteen. Her decision to write about the experience in her 1998 memoir
At Home in the World
resulted in an avalanche of criticism, but eventually led to further disclosures by other women who had been in his life. Salinger died in 2010.

Maynard has also written two children’s books and two young-adult novels; of these,
The Usual Rules
was named by the American Library Association as one of the ten best young-adult novels of 2003. Her literary fiction includes
To Die For
(1991),
Where Love Goes
(1994),
Labor Day
(2009), and
The Good Daughters
(2010).
To Die For
was adapted into a film of the same name starring Nicole Kidman.
Labor Day
is currently being adapted for the screen by director Jason Reitman, and is set to star Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin.

The mother of three grown children, Maynard now lives in Northern California where, in addition to continuing her career as a writer and speaker, she performs regularly as a storyteller with the Moth and Porchlight. She also runs the annual Lake Atitlán Writing Workshop in a small Mayan village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, Guatemala.