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Diana Athill is perhaps best known for her memoir Somewhere Towards the End, but Letters to a Friend could eclipse it. ... Each letter is an unalloyed delight; articulate to the point of eloquence, and candid, even about the naughty bits and her frustration with her long-time lover, Barry Reckord (a Jamaican playwright now deceased). They were together for years, in a relationship so open that, at one point, Athill invited one of his girlfriends to live with them. ...[E]very letter in Letters to a Friend is a small masterpiece; chatty, companionable and very, very intelligent. --Valerie Ryan
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Diana Athill is one of our great women of letters. The renowned editor of V. S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, and many others, she is also a celebrated memoirist whose Somewhere Towards the End was a New York Times bestseller and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. For thirty years, Athill corresponded with the American poet Edward Field, freely sharing jokes, pleasures, and pains with her old friend. Letters to a Friend is an epistolary memoir that describes a warm, decades-long friendship. Written with intimacy and spontaneity, candor and grace, it is perhaps more revealing than any of her celebrated books. Edited, selected, and introduced by Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this collection rich with Athill 's characteristic wit, humor, elegance, and honesty reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd, a brilliant turn of phrase, and a wicked sense of humor. Covering her career as an editor, the adventure of her retirement, her immersion in her own writing, and her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old age including gossip about legendary authors and mutual friends, sharp pen-portraits, and uninhibited accounts of her relationships Letters to a Friend describes a flourishing friendship and offers a portrait of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.
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And the friend in question is the American poet Edward Field
14 April 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I first became a fan of Diana Athill via her 2000 memoir "Stet: An Editor's Life," about her 50 years at Britain's Andre Deutch publishing house where she edited Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Phillip Roth, V. S. Naipul and Jean Rhys, among others. I enjoyed even more her candid, up-close-and-personal 2008 memoir of old age, "Somewhere Towards the End." Then recently via Google I discovered the BBC's 45-minute interview with her in 2004 on Desert Island Discs.
I heartily recommend all of the above.
Now comes "Letters to a Friend," a collection of Athill's 1981-2007 letters to the American poet Edward Field, which I understand is getting great acclaim in Britain. It's interesting--I don't think Athill is capable of writing anything uninteresting--but not as interesting as the others. At least not to me. Maybe that's because in this one she's not talking to me, but to someone I not only don't know, but don't know much about. From her references here to Field's life and works, I think that's an omission on my part that needs fixing ASAP. For others like me who are not familiar with Field's poetry, Amazon has quite a collection, including two books of "collected works."
I heartily recommend all of the above.
Now comes "Letters to a Friend," a collection of Athill's 1981-2007 letters to the American poet Edward Field, which I understand is getting great acclaim in Britain. It's interesting--I don't think Athill is capable of writing anything uninteresting--but not as interesting as the others. At least not to me. Maybe that's because in this one she's not talking to me, but to someone I not only don't know, but don't know much about. From her references here to Field's life and works, I think that's an omission on my part that needs fixing ASAP. For others like me who are not familiar with Field's poetry, Amazon has quite a collection, including two books of "collected works."
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