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Still Life at Eighty: A Memoir
ABOUT THE BOOK
Novelist, critic, essayist, screenwriter, teacher, traveler, and art aficionado, Nicholas Delbanco has here compiled a mosaic of his life as he glances backwards and forwards from the vantage point of his eightieth year. Each home relocation with its inevitable remodeling becomes a metaphor for the reconstruction of the self over his lifetime. In episodic riffs, Still Life at Eighty revisits seven houses where Delbanco welcomed a panoply of literati, such as Mary Ruefle, Mary Lee Settle, Mary Robison, John Ashbery, John Cheever, John Irving, and John Updike. Each abode becomes a receptacle of memory, as he recalls his friendships with the likes of James Baldwin, Grace Paley, Frederick Busch, Donald Barthelme, and Russell Banks.
Still Life at Eighty is saturated with artistic appreciation, which colors Delbanco’s life from early childhood to his eightieth year. The grandson of collectors (whose paintings were plundered by the Nazis), nephew of a London gallerist, son of an accomplished painter, and a collector himself, Delbanco summons his reminiscences of art, artifacts, and artists as he pivots from a youthful artistic apprenticeship to become a prolific professional writer, sustained, and inspired by his wife of fifty-three years, Elena; his daughters, Francesca and Andrea; and five granddaughters.
Delbanco finds solace in the things of this a Biedermeier desk, an Ekoi mask, and an instrument case that held the fabled Countess of Stanlein ex-Paganini Stradivarius Violoncello of 1707—all reminders of a treasured past. Together with these cherished artifacts, former homes, and the myriad writers and artists who slip in and out of this erudite memoir, Still Life at Eighty makes readers privy not only to Delbanco’s rich experiences, but also to the vast aesthetic wealth of his long life.
Novelist, critic, essayist, screenwriter, teacher, traveler, and art aficionado, Nicholas Delbanco has here compiled a mosaic of his life as he glances backwards and forwards from the vantage point of his eightieth year. Each home relocation with its inevitable remodeling becomes a metaphor for the reconstruction of the self over his lifetime. In episodic riffs, Still Life at Eighty revisits seven houses where Delbanco welcomed a panoply of literati, such as Mary Ruefle, Mary Lee Settle, Mary Robison, John Ashbery, John Cheever, John Irving, and John Updike. Each abode becomes a receptacle of memory, as he recalls his friendships with the likes of James Baldwin, Grace Paley, Frederick Busch, Donald Barthelme, and Russell Banks.
Still Life at Eighty is saturated with artistic appreciation, which colors Delbanco’s life from early childhood to his eightieth year. The grandson of collectors (whose paintings were plundered by the Nazis), nephew of a London gallerist, son of an accomplished painter, and a collector himself, Delbanco summons his reminiscences of art, artifacts, and artists as he pivots from a youthful artistic apprenticeship to become a prolific professional writer, sustained, and inspired by his wife of fifty-three years, Elena; his daughters, Francesca and Andrea; and five granddaughters.
Delbanco finds solace in the things of this a Biedermeier desk, an Ekoi mask, and an instrument case that held the fabled Countess of Stanlein ex-Paganini Stradivarius Violoncello of 1707—all reminders of a treasured past. Together with these cherished artifacts, former homes, and the myriad writers and artists who slip in and out of this erudite memoir, Still Life at Eighty makes readers privy not only to Delbanco’s rich experiences, but also to the vast aesthetic wealth of his long life.
225 pages, Paperback
Published September 3, 2024
About the author
Nicholas Delbanco
99 books18 followersNicholas Delbanco is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan and Chair of the Hopwood Committee. He has published twenty-five books of fiction and non-fiction. His most recent novels are The Count of Concord and Spring and Fall; his most recent works of non-fiction are The Countess of Stanlein Restored and The Lost Suitcase: Reflections on the Literary Life. As editor he has compiled the work of, among others, John Gardner and Bernard Malamud. The long-term Director of the MFA Program as well as the Hopwood Awards Program at the University of Michigan, he has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, received a Guggenheim Fellowship and, twice, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship. Professor Delbanco has just completed a teaching text for McGraw-Hill entitled Literature: Craft and Voice, a three-volume Introduction to Literature of which he is the co-editor with Alan Cheuse; in 2004 he published The Sincerest Form: Writiing Fiction by Imitation. His new non-fiction book, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age will be published by Grand Central Publishing in 2011.
Full Biography
NOTE: The following biography was composed in 2000 by Jon Manchip White and reflects information only up to and including that year.
Nationality: American. Born: London, England, 1942. Education: Harvard University, B.A. 1963; Columbia University, M.A. 1966. Career: Member of Department of Language and Literature, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, 1966-84, writing workshop director, 1977-84; professor of English, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1984-85; Robert Frost Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1985—. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts creative writing award, 1973, 1982; National Endowment of Composers and Librettists fellowship, 1976; Guggenheim fellowship, 1980; Woodrow Wilson fellowship; Edward John Noble fellowship; New York State CAPS Award; Vermont Council of the Arts Award; Michigan Council of the Arts Award. Agent: Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc., 1501 Broadway, New York, New York 10036, U.S.A.
As a novelist, Nicholas Delbanco can be considered doubly fortunate in that he has always been able to draw inspiration and sustenance from two continents and two cultures.
Of Italian and German descent, he was born in London at the height of the German Blitz, and his family did not depart for America until he was six, and he was not naturalized as an American citizen until he was eleven. It is not surprising that, though later he would anchor himself firmly in New England and particularly in Vermont, and more recently in Michigan as the Robert Frost Professor of English Language and Literature, the influence of his European origins would play a consistent part in his fiction and non-fiction alike.
The cultural ambivalence, if such it may be called, manifested itself early. At Harvard, his B.A. thesis was devoted to a joint study of Rilke and Heredia, two noteworthy wanderers, and the subject of his M.A. thesis was that tragic outcast, Malcolm Lowry. Examining the numerous novels Delbanco has published to date, one finds that only five are set exclusively in the United States and that the majority are set, either in whole or part, in Provence, Tuscany, Greece, Switzerland, or as far afield as Barbados and Mexico. Several of his non-fiction books are concerned with Europe, one of them a study of that remarkable group of literary exiles, including Conrad, Crane, and James, who lived and worked together in a small corner of England at the turn of the last century. Indeed, one of the courses Delbanco has taught over the years is specifically entitled “Exiles,” and is devoted to Becket, Conrad, and Nabokov, while other courses have featured a gallery of roving and displaced novelists such as Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Ford, Mann, Fitzgerald, and He
Full Biography
NOTE: The following biography was composed in 2000 by Jon Manchip White and reflects information only up to and including that year.
Nationality: American. Born: London, England, 1942. Education: Harvard University, B.A. 1963; Columbia University, M.A. 1966. Career: Member of Department of Language and Literature, Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont, 1966-84, writing workshop director, 1977-84; professor of English, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, 1984-85; Robert Frost Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1985—. Awards: National Endowment for the Arts creative writing award, 1973, 1982; National Endowment of Composers and Librettists fellowship, 1976; Guggenheim fellowship, 1980; Woodrow Wilson fellowship; Edward John Noble fellowship; New York State CAPS Award; Vermont Council of the Arts Award; Michigan Council of the Arts Award. Agent: Brandt & Brandt Literary Agents, Inc., 1501 Broadway, New York, New York 10036, U.S.A.
As a novelist, Nicholas Delbanco can be considered doubly fortunate in that he has always been able to draw inspiration and sustenance from two continents and two cultures.
Of Italian and German descent, he was born in London at the height of the German Blitz, and his family did not depart for America until he was six, and he was not naturalized as an American citizen until he was eleven. It is not surprising that, though later he would anchor himself firmly in New England and particularly in Vermont, and more recently in Michigan as the Robert Frost Professor of English Language and Literature, the influence of his European origins would play a consistent part in his fiction and non-fiction alike.
The cultural ambivalence, if such it may be called, manifested itself early. At Harvard, his B.A. thesis was devoted to a joint study of Rilke and Heredia, two noteworthy wanderers, and the subject of his M.A. thesis was that tragic outcast, Malcolm Lowry. Examining the numerous novels Delbanco has published to date, one finds that only five are set exclusively in the United States and that the majority are set, either in whole or part, in Provence, Tuscany, Greece, Switzerland, or as far afield as Barbados and Mexico. Several of his non-fiction books are concerned with Europe, one of them a study of that remarkable group of literary exiles, including Conrad, Crane, and James, who lived and worked together in a small corner of England at the turn of the last century. Indeed, one of the courses Delbanco has taught over the years is specifically entitled “Exiles,” and is devoted to Becket, Conrad, and Nabokov, while other courses have featured a gallery of roving and displaced novelists such as Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, Ford, Mann, Fitzgerald, and He
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 5, 2024
After reading a book blogger's review of this memoir I ordered a copy. It interested me because Delbanco taught at University of Michigan, and because he knew some famous writers. He studied under John Updike and invited John Gardner to teach at Bennington.
The memoir begins with a nostalgic trip through the many houses he owned. I have a particular nostalgia about houses myself. Then, he addresses his career as a writer, beginning with his childhood history of art. Lastly, he considers 'things of this world,' and ends with a consideration of aging and mortality.
It is a life filled with blessings, especially considering all his family lost during the Holocaust. He wrote and published, hung out with some of the greats, married the love of his life, and had children with successful careers.
There are no horrible experiences or confessions or trauma in his life. Instead, the memoir is an enjoyable, beautifully written conversation about the gifts of life.
In another eight years I will be eighty. I did not enjoy the success and exciting life that Delbanco did. I don't have grandkids, so won't have that bit of going forward into the future. But, as his title says, there can still be life at eighty, it's not over until it's over.
The memoir begins with a nostalgic trip through the many houses he owned. I have a particular nostalgia about houses myself. Then, he addresses his career as a writer, beginning with his childhood history of art. Lastly, he considers 'things of this world,' and ends with a consideration of aging and mortality.
It is a life filled with blessings, especially considering all his family lost during the Holocaust. He wrote and published, hung out with some of the greats, married the love of his life, and had children with successful careers.
There are no horrible experiences or confessions or trauma in his life. Instead, the memoir is an enjoyable, beautifully written conversation about the gifts of life.
In another eight years I will be eighty. I did not enjoy the success and exciting life that Delbanco did. I don't have grandkids, so won't have that bit of going forward into the future. But, as his title says, there can still be life at eighty, it's not over until it's over.
September 10, 2024
A life devoted to words (Upstate New York, Vermont, Michigan, Cape Cod National Seashore, Manhattan; 1966 to present-day): When Nicholas Delbanco sums up over fifty years writing and teaching as a “life largely to do with language,” the “work of words,” his memoir calls out to a blog enchanted by words.
Still Life At Eighty also fits a blogger’s dream to share books that uplift. When was the last time you were struck by a memoir with an abundance of “sentimental remembrance” for the past? For a grateful life of privilege, not hardships to overcome? Reaching the age of eighty with a “dream of doing the same”?
You learn a lot about a man’s character in a memoir – reworded with the me in memoir italicized -in which the writer spends as much time praising the literary giants and “recognizable artists” he’s had the honor to work with and befriend than his own writings. Humble given Delbanco’s prolific body of work consists of thirty novels and nonfiction books.
For instance, his fictional trilogy, Sherbrookes, perhaps best known for, sounds so inviting, seemingly born from his Vermont years. Among his nonfiction works, Running in Place: Scenes from the South of France, based on repeated travels to Provence over thirty years, highlighted, apparently, by his relationship with James Baldwin, neighbor and good friend. Both must-reads after gulping down this engaging memoir.
Place matters profoundly to Delbanco. It’s the organizing principle for understanding how he’s chosen to reflect back on the stages of his well “lived life” through seven houses in different places he’s owned and transformed into home so the physical space creates the “spirit of a place.” Place, then, is defined by time, introduced in Part I, “Time and Place.”
It comes as a surprise, at least to this reviewer, that a writer publishing books since 1966 at twenty-three; taught twenty years at Bennington College in Vermont, founding/directing the Bennington Writing Workshops and their prestigious low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program; and another thirty years teaching at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, including directing their Helen Zell Writers’ Program (formerly MFA in Creative Writing Program) and long-running acclaimed Hopwood Creative Writing Awards, retiring as the Robert Frost Distinguished Professor in English, would have the time, energy, and patience over and over to do major renovations, repairs, and remodeling of the seven houses he’s lived in – alone, married, raising two daughters (he’s very proud of, they too work with words), and one co-owning with a couple who were friends and shared a passion for architecture and art.
It’s that passion for aesthetics that would seem to explain why all those makeovers aren’t described as chaotic or stressful. Except for the word “demanding,” Delbanco is a bona fide art aficionado above all else. His homes were decorated with “art and photographs” and objects like the one on the book’s cover. Its poetic significance revealed in Part III, “Things of This World.” The reader will guess the image conveys the memoir’s journey looking in two directions, mostly to the past and to the future. The title comes from a 1956 poem by Pulitzer-Prize winning Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” reflecting a memoir filled with the people and artifacts that have brought beauty, fulfillment, and meaning into his life.
Love is seen in so many ways. First and foremost is the “love of his life,” his wife Elena he’s been married to for fifty-three years, and the two daughters they’ve raised. Elena’s father the famed cellist, Bernard Greenhouse, one of the three founders of the Beaux Arts Trio.
Love of his craft and the writers he met along the way reads like a Who’s Who in Modern Literature, starting with the “Johns” such as John Cheever, John Gardner, John Irving, John Updike. The list of greats is a mile long.
Part II, “On Churchill’s Chair,” revisits the author’s eleven-year-old writing self: his seriousness, scholarship, and confidence recalled from a remembrance keepsake file that stores the young writer’s research and thoughts on the history of painting “from Cave Art to Modern Times.” He, and we, are bowled over by the quality and maturity of a boy’s study.
Crafting the memoir without chapters, only the three Parts, harkens us to literature of the past, not to the brisk chapters in contemporary novels. Each part is separated by intimate B/W photographs of the author with his family, houses, followed by pictures with writers at literary events mixed with images of his five granddaughters, and his grandparents (collectors of art), and his parents (his father was a painter) when they lived in Germany. His novel, What Remains fictionalizes his German-Jewish heritage.
The way Delbanco’s houses depict his coming-of-age, early adulthood, midlife, and retirement stages connects with psychologist Erik Erikson’s “Psychosocial Stages” of development. A realization credited to a recent article offering an interesting perspective to Delanco’s approach to his memoir: “A ‘Life Review’ Can Be Powerful at Any Age.”
As an expansive and zoomed in life review of the diversity of places and spaces for framing Delbanco’s life, you’ll see how comfortably he switches from living in the “middle of nowhere,” to a small New England college town, to a larger city in a Midwestern suburb, to the lakeshore of the Great Lake of Michigan, back to New England fronting an ocean, and then to the condo he lives in today, splitting his time between the two homes he owns today in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and Manhattan. He seems equally happy on a gorgeous natural beach landscape as the hustle and bustle of a world-class city with sweeping views of the Hudson River.
Of his seven homes, he says, “All the buildings still stand,” implying so does he, fortunate to be entering an older stage of life with his life partner, he dedicates the book to. “The roofs I focus on were ones I chose myself when I attained a “man’s estate,” and the sight-line is rear-facing and chronological.”
“There’s melancholy, yes,” but also the grace of someone who has a good “sense of time well spent.” His use of the words “river’s edge” characterizes a physical place, but also his poignant awareness of old aging. And yet a lively and inspiring spirit of gladness is ever-present.
His commentary about James Baldwin – that he “exemplified what open-generosity might mean”; and “an intensity of attention to language”; and an “unswerving devotion to craft” strikes a familiar chord: you could say the same about Nicholas Delbanco.
“Who were the great ones and how were they great and why do they matter today?” wrote that eleven-year-old literary prodigy researching great artists. Prophetic as he could have been asking the same question about himself all these years later.
Still Life At Eighty also fits a blogger’s dream to share books that uplift. When was the last time you were struck by a memoir with an abundance of “sentimental remembrance” for the past? For a grateful life of privilege, not hardships to overcome? Reaching the age of eighty with a “dream of doing the same”?
You learn a lot about a man’s character in a memoir – reworded with the me in memoir italicized -in which the writer spends as much time praising the literary giants and “recognizable artists” he’s had the honor to work with and befriend than his own writings. Humble given Delbanco’s prolific body of work consists of thirty novels and nonfiction books.
For instance, his fictional trilogy, Sherbrookes, perhaps best known for, sounds so inviting, seemingly born from his Vermont years. Among his nonfiction works, Running in Place: Scenes from the South of France, based on repeated travels to Provence over thirty years, highlighted, apparently, by his relationship with James Baldwin, neighbor and good friend. Both must-reads after gulping down this engaging memoir.
Place matters profoundly to Delbanco. It’s the organizing principle for understanding how he’s chosen to reflect back on the stages of his well “lived life” through seven houses in different places he’s owned and transformed into home so the physical space creates the “spirit of a place.” Place, then, is defined by time, introduced in Part I, “Time and Place.”
It comes as a surprise, at least to this reviewer, that a writer publishing books since 1966 at twenty-three; taught twenty years at Bennington College in Vermont, founding/directing the Bennington Writing Workshops and their prestigious low-residency MFA Creative Writing Program; and another thirty years teaching at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, including directing their Helen Zell Writers’ Program (formerly MFA in Creative Writing Program) and long-running acclaimed Hopwood Creative Writing Awards, retiring as the Robert Frost Distinguished Professor in English, would have the time, energy, and patience over and over to do major renovations, repairs, and remodeling of the seven houses he’s lived in – alone, married, raising two daughters (he’s very proud of, they too work with words), and one co-owning with a couple who were friends and shared a passion for architecture and art.
It’s that passion for aesthetics that would seem to explain why all those makeovers aren’t described as chaotic or stressful. Except for the word “demanding,” Delbanco is a bona fide art aficionado above all else. His homes were decorated with “art and photographs” and objects like the one on the book’s cover. Its poetic significance revealed in Part III, “Things of This World.” The reader will guess the image conveys the memoir’s journey looking in two directions, mostly to the past and to the future. The title comes from a 1956 poem by Pulitzer-Prize winning Richard Wilbur, “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World,” reflecting a memoir filled with the people and artifacts that have brought beauty, fulfillment, and meaning into his life.
Love is seen in so many ways. First and foremost is the “love of his life,” his wife Elena he’s been married to for fifty-three years, and the two daughters they’ve raised. Elena’s father the famed cellist, Bernard Greenhouse, one of the three founders of the Beaux Arts Trio.
Love of his craft and the writers he met along the way reads like a Who’s Who in Modern Literature, starting with the “Johns” such as John Cheever, John Gardner, John Irving, John Updike. The list of greats is a mile long.
Part II, “On Churchill’s Chair,” revisits the author’s eleven-year-old writing self: his seriousness, scholarship, and confidence recalled from a remembrance keepsake file that stores the young writer’s research and thoughts on the history of painting “from Cave Art to Modern Times.” He, and we, are bowled over by the quality and maturity of a boy’s study.
Crafting the memoir without chapters, only the three Parts, harkens us to literature of the past, not to the brisk chapters in contemporary novels. Each part is separated by intimate B/W photographs of the author with his family, houses, followed by pictures with writers at literary events mixed with images of his five granddaughters, and his grandparents (collectors of art), and his parents (his father was a painter) when they lived in Germany. His novel, What Remains fictionalizes his German-Jewish heritage.
The way Delbanco’s houses depict his coming-of-age, early adulthood, midlife, and retirement stages connects with psychologist Erik Erikson’s “Psychosocial Stages” of development. A realization credited to a recent article offering an interesting perspective to Delanco’s approach to his memoir: “A ‘Life Review’ Can Be Powerful at Any Age.”
As an expansive and zoomed in life review of the diversity of places and spaces for framing Delbanco’s life, you’ll see how comfortably he switches from living in the “middle of nowhere,” to a small New England college town, to a larger city in a Midwestern suburb, to the lakeshore of the Great Lake of Michigan, back to New England fronting an ocean, and then to the condo he lives in today, splitting his time between the two homes he owns today in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and Manhattan. He seems equally happy on a gorgeous natural beach landscape as the hustle and bustle of a world-class city with sweeping views of the Hudson River.
Of his seven homes, he says, “All the buildings still stand,” implying so does he, fortunate to be entering an older stage of life with his life partner, he dedicates the book to. “The roofs I focus on were ones I chose myself when I attained a “man’s estate,” and the sight-line is rear-facing and chronological.”
“There’s melancholy, yes,” but also the grace of someone who has a good “sense of time well spent.” His use of the words “river’s edge” characterizes a physical place, but also his poignant awareness of old aging. And yet a lively and inspiring spirit of gladness is ever-present.
His commentary about James Baldwin – that he “exemplified what open-generosity might mean”; and “an intensity of attention to language”; and an “unswerving devotion to craft” strikes a familiar chord: you could say the same about Nicholas Delbanco.
“Who were the great ones and how were they great and why do they matter today?” wrote that eleven-year-old literary prodigy researching great artists. Prophetic as he could have been asking the same question about himself all these years later.
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June 14, 2025I am 87. Experienced “dread” most of my life. At 86, dread disappeared for no discernible reason. Nothing in my life changed. This memoir spoke to me.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews