Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill
Time has not diminished the interest in the memories of Athill, who was born during a WWI zeppelin raid. Her life reflects the history she lived through. Engaged as a young woman in war time, she fell in love and got engaged to an RAF pilot. Posted to Egypt, he wrote to her at first ardently and frequently, then irregularly, then not at all. A final cold letter two years later asked her be release him to marry another. Then he was killed. Interpreting this youthful heartbreak as her own failure to be lovable undermined Athill's self-confidence for more than a decade. But this is not the focus of the memoir. Written in her early forties, it describes the small and varied things that gave her strength to recover a life of joy and optimism.
Though Diana Athill greatly enjoyed her work as an editor, she never thought of herself as a writer until a story came to her out of the blue. She wrote it out, sent it in to a contest, and won first prize -- five hundred pounds. This unexpected win proved a watershed moment -- she concluded she might we worth something after all.
Athill's temperament, joys, sorrows and maturing process are clearly reflected as she addresses the reader with a breathtakingly intimate frankness. Various evocations include a memorable holiday on Corfu and her description of the publisher's life. Revealing her hopes, fears and expectations for books on the Deutsch list, she deems some good, even though "they don't happen to interest me." Others she regrets accepting, feeling that they "will flop and deserve to flop."
Then there are the commercially motivated books -- needful for a small press that started on a shoestring and lived from hand to mouth. One of these she describes as "embarrassing," but "not actually pernicious." Wryly, she admits its redeeming feature: it is certain to make money.
Most important are her "darlings" -- few in number, written by the rare talents who come to light in each generation, these books "had to exist." They explain why she and others go into publishing, and why they love the work.
Athill expresses her love of literary art in the strongest terms. "...if artists did not exist, I cannot imagine that I would. I shall be grateful all my life to Andre Deutsch for having come to my party and steered me into a job in which I have been able to get to know a few of what seem to me by far the most real human beings in the world."