For nearly five decades Diana Athill edited (nursed, coerced, coaxed)
some of the most celebrated writers in the English language--among them
V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Mordecai Richler, and Norman Mailer. A
founding editor of the prestigious publishing house Andr Deutsch Ltd.,
Athill takes us on a guided tour through the corridors of literary
London, offering a keenly observed, devilishly funny, and always
compassionate insider's portrait of the glories and pitfalls of making
books.
Stet is spiced with candid insights about the type of people who make
brilliant writers and ingenious publishers and the idiosyncrasies of
both. It brims with Athill's memories of serving as confidante, midwife,
and sometime therapist to great literary figures: Nobody who has read
Jean Rhys' first four novels can suppose that she was good at life, but
no one who never met her could know how very bad she was at it; "It was
my job to listen to [Naipaul's] unhappiness and do what I could to
ease it, which would not have been too bad if there had been anything I
could do." Most of all it is Athill's voice that captivates--intimate,
lively, generous, humorous, the voice of a favorite aunt who is as warm
and big-hearted as she is worldly and irreverent.
Packed with delights, Stet is about the world of books, about people
who write them and the process of making them, a world dissected with
sharp and irresistible honesty. It is an invaluable contribution to the
world of literature.
