Joyce Maynard (born November 5, 1953) is an American novelist and journalist. She began her career in journalism in the 1970s, writing for several publications, most notably Seventeen magazine and The New York Times. Maynard contributed to Mademoiselle and Harrowsmith magazines in the 1980s, while also beginning a career as a novelist with the publication of her first novel, Baby Love (1981). Her second novel, To Die For (1992), drew on the Pamela Smart murder case and was adapted into the 1995 film of the same name. Maynard received significant media attention in 1998 with the publication of her memoir At Home in the World, which deals with her affair with J. D. Salinger.
Maynard has published novels in a wide range of literary genres, including fiction, young adult fiction, and true crime. Her sixth novel, Labor Day (2009), was adapted into the 2013 film of the same name, directed by Jason Reitman. Her most recent novels include The Good Daughters (2010), After Her (2013), Under the Influence (2016), and Count the Ways (2021).
Early life
Maynard was born in Durham, New Hampshire, the daughter of Fredelle (née Bruser), a journalist, writer, and English teacher, and Max Maynard, a painter and professor of English at the University of New Hampshire (and brother of theologian Theodore Maynard). Her father was born in India to English missionary parents and later moved to Canada; her mother was born in Saskatchewan to Jewish immigrants from Russia. Maynard has an older sister, Rona.
Maynard attended the Oyster River school district and Phillips Exeter Academy. She won Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, and 1971. In her teens, she wrote regularly for Seventeen magazine. She entered Yale University in 1971 and sent a collection of her writings to the editors of The New York Times Magazine. They asked her to write an article about growing up in the 1960s, which was published under the title "An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life" in the magazine's April 23, 1972, issue. After the article was published, Maynard received a letter from fiction writer J. D. Salinger, then 53 years old, who complimented her writing and warned her of the dangers of publicity.
Relationship with Salinger and At Home in the World
In spring 1972, Maynard and Salinger exchanged letters during her freshman year at Yale University. By July 1972, Maynard had given up her summer job writing for The New York Times to move in with Salinger into his house in Cornish, New Hampshire. Salinger and his wife had divorced in 1967. By September 1972, she had given up her scholarship to Yale and dropped out. While living with him for eight months, mid-1972 until March 1973, Maynard wrote her first book, a memoir titled Looking Back: A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties, which was published in 1973 soon after Maynard and Salinger ended their relationship.
Maynard withheld information about their relationship until her 1998 memoir At Home in the World. The memoir, an account of her entire life up to that point, is best known for its in-depth retelling of her relationship with Salinger, whom she portrays as a predator. At its publication, many reviewers furiously panned the book, such as Jonathan Yardley from the Washington Post, who called it “indescribably stupid.”
During the same year, she auctioned the letters that Salinger had written to her. Software developer Peter Norton bought the letters for $156,500 and returned them to Salinger.
In 2021, Maynard would write on the relationship in Vanity Fair relating to Allen v. Farrow, stating that “I was groomed to be the sexual partner of a narcissist who nearly derailed my life,” going into detail on the other relations with teenagers Salinger had at the same time, and "[w]hen he sent me away less than a year later with words of contempt and disdain, I believed the failure was mine, and that I was no longer worthy of his love or even respect." With regards to the reception of her memoirs, she notes the negative reception, adding “I was accused of trying to sell books, to make money from my brief and inconsequential connection to a great man,” noting "[O]ne writer, Cynthia Ozick—hardly alone among celebrated authors, weighing in with her condemnation—portrayed me as a person who, in possession of no talent of my own, had attached myself to Salinger to 'suck out' his celebrity."