Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

Written in an even more vivid and direct style than her celebrated memoirs, Diana Athill’s letters to the American poet Edward Field reveal a sharply intelligent woman with a brilliant sense of humour, a keen eye for the absurd, a fierce loyalty and a passionate zest for life. This intimate correspondence spanning thirty years covers her final years as an editor at Andre Deutsch, her retirement and immersion in her own writing, her growing fame and encroaching old age, and gives a fascinating insight into a life fully lived. Edited, selected and introduced by Diana Athill, and annotated with her own delightful notes, this funny, revealing and immensely readable collection will bring enormous pleasure to her many thousands of readers.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography, Ebooks, Writing

360 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Diana Athill was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company André Deutsch Ltd.

She was born in Norfolk in 1917 and educated at home until she was fourteen. She read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and graduated in 1939. She spent the war years working at the BBC Overseas Service in the News Information Department. After the war she met André Deutsch and fell into publishing. She worked as an editor, first at Allan Wingate and then at André Deutsch, until her retirement at the age of 75 in 1993.

Her books include An Unavoidable Delay, a collection of short stories published in 1962 and two 'documentary' books After A Funeral and Make Believe. Stet is a memoir of Diana Athill's fifty-year career in publishing. Granta has also reissued a memoir Instead of a Letter and her only novel Don't Look at Me Like That. She lived in Primrose Hill in London.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read by Diana Athill in three months, and what a joy it was.

It consists of a collection of her letters - over thirty years of correspondence with the American poet Edward Field. The letters started when she was eighty-four. This was a late-blossoming friendship and all the more appreciated because of that. They began quite formally, with her addressing him as “Dear Mr. Field”, and when they ended, when she was ninety, she was addressing him “Darling” and “Darling Edward”.

It’s a one-side correspondence. We only see her letters, as Edward’s were destroyed by Athill’s overly-practical and tidying hand, but what a treat for us that Edward kept hers…. Also, in spite of the one-sidedness, it is unabashedly clear the deep affection they had for one another….and that warmth infuses the letters with much charm.

Even in her eighties Athill is quite the high energy woman of letters. She writes with gusto about friends, parties, writing books, being a recognised author, her travels, various life crises, money and ageing. Inject into all of that a kindly but astute eye for people, a fine intelligence and a wry sense of humour - and the letters light up. Here is a taster of her wonderful warmth and enthusiasm.

Darling Edward –

This morning your book arrived. What a beautiful book – emerging from its wrappings like the sun from cloud – and then I opened it and began to have just a quick look before getting up – obviously such a lovely fat book was going to need slow reading , so just a preliminary squint……and darling Edward, it is now 1:30 and I am still in bed and I am still thinking of it as a quick preliminary squint because that’s what it is. There’s so much marvellous reading in your poems I’m going to return and return to them, and they make me love you so much. It really is a life that you are bravely putting into our hands, and it’s awe-inspiring to see that being done.”

I think this is a wonderful book by a wonderful woman. It makes you feel better about being a human being.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this companion piece to her wonderful memoirs, Athill gives one side (hers) of her correspondence with American poet Edward Field. Their correspondence began in 1981, after Field made an enquiry to Athill, at André Deutsch publishing house (where she worked as an editor for over 40 years), about reviving their mutual friend Alfred Chester’s publications. As the letters progress, “Dear Mr. Field” quickly becomes “Darling Edward” and “Dearest Edward.”

It was an unlikely friendship in some ways: Athill was a posh English lady in her mid-sixties, while Field was a gay, bohemian poet in New York City. “You are such a different kind of person from me,” Diana wrote early on, “and how rarely does someone open his sensibility so wide that one is able to enter into a different way of feeling.” Despite their differences – and a separation of over 3,000 miles – Athill remembers “it was truly lovely to feel, as soon as I met you and Neil [Derrick, Fields’s partner], ‘Now here are people with whom it’s possible really to connect’…which seems to me to be worth celebrating.”

It is interesting to see the effects of a growing dependence on technology: for both Athill and Field the typewriter is eventually overtaken by the computer, and letters replaced by e-mails. With these changes comes an inevitable loss of formality and poetry. Yet there is a remarkable liveliness and wit to these letters, as Athill reflects on a life with books.

(This review formed part of an article about letter writing for Bookkaholic.)

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a while to get through this one as I could only read a few letters at a time. Really glad I read Stet: An Editor's Life first for backstory and context on her life.

On the plus side: very high writing quality, enough context for content that I didn't feel "lost" without the other half of the exchange. Also, Diana was good about rolling with the punches with whatever life was throwing at her sometimes. Appreciated her learning to manage computers as a senior citizen.

Not so positive: tough keeping track of the family, friends, etc. she mentions. Later in the book there's a focus on declining health, to the extent that folks with hypochondriac tendencies might be triggered (ahem). Going out on a limb here to opine that I felt she wasn't fully objective about her flatmate, Barry; frankly, he came across somewhat narcissistic to me.

So, yes, I'd recommend this book to Diana fans (completionists). Do Not Start Here with her!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1981, editor/author Diana Athill began a correspondence with the American poet Edward Field: “An open nature invites an open response: right from the start I knew that to Edward I could say anything, and this it was that made these letters fun to write.” He recounts in his introduction: “When Diana’s long, marvelous letters arrived, I’d read them aloud to Neil [his partner] —they were an Event!” He and Neil enjoyed her letters so much they typed them up and sent the manuscript to Ms Athill, suggesting she publish them. After demurring for years, she finally agreed to publish her letters through 2007 “because they record something precious to me: a friendship that has given me, and still gives me, much pleasure”.

Since Mr Fields letters did not survive, they are not included, but we can still enjoy these delightful letters representing their long friendship and Ms Athill’s experiences. Ms Athill writes of daily life, literature, friends, family, and old age. Per Mr Field, “the letters chart the voyage from her final years at Andre Deutsch, and how she recovered from the chrysalis of retirement and emerged like a butterfly as a famous writer at the age of ninety,” and says of his friend “authors as a breed tend not to be sober, thrifty, or wise, and in this kind of crowd someone with good sense is a treasure”. This reader agrees.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Letters from Diana Athill to her poet friend from 1981 to 2007

I am slowly reading my way through all of Diana Athill's nonfiction after falling in love with her personality and way of expressing herself in "Somewhere Towards the End". This one did not disappoint. It's amazing to me that a one-sided correspondence (the poet's letters were not kept) could hold my interest this much. I sank into them, and wanted to see what happened next in Diana's life - the last letter said she was having a medical problem, would this be resolved in the next one???

This is definitely not the place to start reading this delightful, honest, hard-hitting writer, but it's a wonderful check in.

[Chrissie]

***********************

*Somewhere Towards the End 3 stars
*Letters to a Friend TBR
*Stet: A Memoir TBR

[Hol]

I don’t ordinarily read collections of letters, but Diana Athill is such good company. It’s amazing to be able to follow her first-person writing--memoirs and letters--over such a long period of time. By now illness has replaced sex as a preoccupation, and it’s interesting to learn how she deals with the vicissitudes of aging; at one point, for instance, she has broken off two of her remaining teeth and in her wait for treatment becomes depressed and considers Prozac, but turns to Trollope instead. Note: The cover of this book is quite striking, and I noticed people starting at it on the subway while I read.

[Jo Larkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love her voice in this long series of lovely letters. You feel she wrote as she spoke...honestly, warmly, wittily and wisely. I greatly enjoyed the intimate insight into her vivid and interesting life. It made me resolve to write more letters in the hope of receiving more. She so obviously enjoys the writing of them and often admits to letter writing as a displacement activity to avoid some unappealing task.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually read collections of letters, so was pleasantly surprised how good these were. Athill is quite the character, and this book shines with her exuberance, zest for life, and a unique way of expressing it. Fascinating and captivating

[Alix Chidley-Uttley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Articulate, funny with eyebrow lifting honesty. The continued theme through this book is that I REALLY wish I had been friends with Diana, she is a true card. Read, it’s a delight.

[Yusuf Nasrullah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erudite, personal, spirited and full of life and questions of friendship, art, love, life...

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this for a Reading Group so it’s not something I would usually choose but I really enjoyed it. It took a while to warm to some of the characters (I think the letter format makes it tricky to connect the characters to each other sometimes) but I grew to love the author’s unique voice and want to read more of her memoirs.

[Judith Hannan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked Somewhere Towards the End, but I did not like Letters to a Friend. I thought it diminished Athill. These are just ordinary letters filled with ordinary thoughts. Which is fine, but not as a book. It felt petty. Perhaps in another form they would have felt weightier, but here they weren't too far removed from listening in on a one-sided phone conversation. I was often confused because the reader is privy to ony a one-way conversation. Any book--whether it is fiction, memoir, biography, young adult, graphic, "adult," or letters--has to be about characters and ideas, and both of these were weak for me in Letters to a Friend. I'm actually not sure why I finished it except to think that, seen as a whole, I would find more wisdom in the letters. I did not. Too bad.

[Sue Uden · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the first page of the book under 'Praise for Diana Athill' the quote from The Observer reads 'There is a sense throughout Athill's work that you are making a new friend'. And reading these letters felt just like that to me. My only consolation that I have finished them now is that I have 'Stet' waiting in my TBR and I fully intend to lay my hands on every other word she has written. She has also made me curious about the recipient of her letters, Edward Field, about whom I know nothing. So I must look on the shelves for his books also. I can't recommend these letters highly enough, especially to anyone of 'a certain age'.

[Jeff Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a collection of Diana Athill's a few years ago, enjoyed them a lot so picked this one up. I fear this is a genre of book than with the rise of social media will totally disappear in a generation's time. It's a collection of letters written to an American friend and frankly it's excellent. Like all good letters it informative & gossipy but the thing it's done most is make me really think about growing old and dying. There is a quote in the book that says "Obsession with health can easily take over from sex as life's major problem..." Ain't that the truth...

[Lee Kofman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this collection of letters. Their total really didn’t amount to a book… While the book paints a poignant picture of what it is like to get older, I found a lot of the material repetitive or too mundane to be interesting. Athill's voice is lovely even in these letters but the clever sentences didn’t compensate – for me at least – for the overall tedium. I think sometimes when people turn too famous they should become particularly discerning as to what they publish. This book was nowhere near the standard of her memoir writing.

[Deodand · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find myself smiling when I read Athill's work. She seems like a rare person, who is grateful for everything and full of optimism and enthusiasm. Also one hell of a friend - she is the type who will stick by until death. She's exactly what I would want in a friend. I think this book may be a bore or irrelevant to many, but for some reason it is just to my taste.

[Tock · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I honestly didn't think I would care for the book. The book is entirely all letters to her friend, Edward. But I guess it's just pure curiosity and what next that kept me interested. And being there was no set chapters, just letters, this book was easy to keep in the car and grab when I had time to kill.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love reading letters. Athill had already thrown away her correspondent's letters when he had the idea of publishing them as a book. Awkward? I could really relate to her frustrations with computers and the aging process. Lots of good stuff about the National Health system. I liked this enough that I want to read her books now.

[Bernadette Jansen op de Haar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful example of how 'old-fashioned' letters can tell a story and bring characters to life. Even more fascinating because the letters represent only one half of the conversation. Same to think that this will no longer work in this era of email conversations.

[Kathleen Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I am just beginning this Novel. I love books that delve into conversations in letter, email, etc. It brings a new dimension to the writing.. So here I go-wish me luck. My friend stole it from me and will not give it back. She loves it. So as soon as I get it back I will be attacking it.

[Hazel · Rating 2 out of 5]

reading her letters was fun as she is witty & funny, but i would have liked it better if edward's letters were included as it would have given the reader a clearer picture of the kind of interesting banter that went on between them

[Lynn Kearney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the material is familiar to readers of her other books, especially Somewhere Towards the End, but it's an engaging read nonetheless; she's such an interesting woman and she writes so very well.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is told through letters written to a friend. It was a little different to read, but interesting. I won this through the GoodReads giveaways!

[Pat Garmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a Firstreads giveaway. A glaringly honest look at life presented in the format of letters written to a friend over a period of many years. This was an interesting book.

[Mooch · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a First Reads giveaway.

A collection of letters the author wrote to her friend Edward. Not typically my thing, but you get interested.

[Jean-christophe Brunet · Rating 5 out of 5]

For its humanity.

[Mary Lou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a collection of letters writen by Diana Athill to her friend, poet Edward Field. This interesting and often surprising set is enough to make me want to read more of her memoirs

[Jess Besack · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you already know and love Diana Athill, this is great.