Joyce Maynard was a winsome Yale undergraduate when she wrote an article called "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life" for the New York Times Magazine in 1972. Famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger, 35 years her senior, read the piece, looked at the accompanying photograph (the one on the cover of this book) and wrote to the budding young writer. Thus began a correspondence, then a meeting, and then a live-in relationship. That lasted for less than a year, but it's the sole reason for the existence of this meretricious, solipsistic book in which Ms.Maynard dishes the dirt on someone who has always fiercely safeguarded his privacy. Its self-absorption and tackiness make for depressing reading.