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Stet: An Editor's Life

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Diana Athill,in this lovely book,exhibits the qualities that surely got her through a 50-year editing career. She is wise, honest, sincere, and most importantly, sane. I read every word with relish. She never attempts to outshine the authors she writes about with such discretion. When she retires, her few words of happiness and relief after a long career are more meaningful than those who go on for pages. When she tells a writer the things that make her happy, one is happy with her, and sad for the writer so possessed with himself that he can't see her simple formula for living. Diana Athill is someone I'd like to have tea with or stroll in the park. When you can introduce yourself to a perfect stranger through the pages of a book, you are a very good writer. Her editing skills must have been superb. Read this book with tea.

Writing at a very young 83, Diana Athill says of her memoir, Stet, "Why am I going to write it? Not because I want to provide a history of British publishing in the second half of the twentieth century, but because I shall not be alive for much longer, and when I am gone all the experiences stored in my head will be gone too - they will be deleted with one swipe of the great eraser, and something in me squeaks 'Oh no - let at least some of it be rescued!' It seems to be an instinctive twitch rather than a rational intention, but no less compelling for that. By a long-established printer's convention, a copy editor wanting to rescue a deletion puts a row of dots under it and writes 'Stet' (let it stand) in the margin. This book is an attempt to 'Stet' some part of my experience in its original form...."

And if it hadn't been for that "instinct," some of the best published works of our time might never have seen the light of day. Athill spent 50 years in publishing, most of them at London's Andre Deutsch Limited, working with the likes of Jean Rhys, Norman Mailer, George Orwell, V.S. Naipaul, Jack Kerouac and Peggy Guggenheim.

She has some great stories; among them, the plight Orwell faced in seeking a publisher for Animal Farm, and Mailer in the same situation due to the excessive use of profanity in his manuscript of The Naked and the Dead.

And she's funny, too. Of a co-worker, she explains, "Nick edited our nonfiction - not all of it, and not fast. He was such a stickler for correctness that he often had to be mopped-up after, when his treatment of someone's prose had been over-pedantic, or when his shock at a split infinitive had diverted his attention from some error of fact."

Athill has had a long affiliation with books and reading, starting with a grandmother who "read aloud so beautifully that we never tired of listening to her," in homes with walls lined with books; while at Christmas and birthdays, "80 percent of the presents we got were books."

She invites us along as she reflects on, and romanticizes every aspect of her life, including personal relationships: "Quite early in my career the image of a glass-bottomed boat came to me as an apt one for sex; a love-making relationship with a man offered chances to peer at what went on under his surface." Careerwise, she had to endure and learn how to deal with an overly critical boss - the same one who was so flustered upon meeting the Queen Mother that he curtsied instead of bowing - while her work often presented a daunting task.

Of one such occasion, she states, "The latter book was by a man who could not write. He had clumsily and laboriously put a great many words on paper because he happened to be obsessed by his subject. No one but a hungry young publisher building a list would have waded through his typescript, but having done so I realized that he knew everything it was possible to know about a significant and extraordinary event, and that his book would be a thoroughly respectable addition to our list if only it could be made readable." Of the editing process on this project, she says, "It was like removing layers of crumpled brown paper from an awkwardly shaped parcel, and revealing the attractive present which it contained...."

Athill has a wonderful way with words. Describing an early employer, she relates, "I remember Allan Wingate's first premises rather than its first books simply because the first books were so feeble that I blush for them."

Speaking of her craft - of editing books about everything from architecture to Tahiti - Athill says, "it can teach a lot about a subject unfamiliar to you, which you might not otherwise have approached," and "One was always moving from one kind of world into another, and I loved that."

And there were other rewards. Author Gitta Sereny wrote, "Diana Athill edited Into That Darkness. She has lent it - and me - her warmth, her intelligence, her literary fluency, and a quality of involvement I had little right to expect. I am grateful that she has become my friend."

But at the same time, not all of those she edited were always grateful. When it came to the gentleman mentioned earlier - the one who "could not write", and whose manuscript Athill had entirely reworked - upon publication of his book The Times Literary Supplement published a glowing review saying, among other things, that the book was "beautifully written." Athill: "The author promptly sent me a clipping of this review, pinned to a short note. 'How nice of him,' I thought, 'he's going to say thank you!' What he said in fact was: 'You will observe the comment about the writing which confirms what I have thought all along, that none of that fuss about it was necessary.'"

Diana Athill's book is a gem, as is she.

Anyone who has ever worked in newspapers or publishing will be familiar with `stet', an age-old editor's term for `let it stand', meaning disregard any and all changes.

This is an apt title for a memoir from one of London's best known and highly regarded editors, Dianna Athill, who spent 50 years massaging the words and assisting in the careers of many literary powerhouses, including V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys and Mordecai Richler as well as America's Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Kenneth Galbraith.

These feats are worth trumpeting but Athill, now in her 80s, chronicles her working life in an alluring, understated fashion: "All this book is, is the story of an old ex-editor who imagines that she will feel a little less dead if a few people read it."

`Stet: an editor's life' does a lot more than that. It gives writers and readers a fresh insight into the challenges of publishing as well as the trade's peaks and troughs throughout the latter half of the 20th century, before the conglomerates dominated.

Athill founded with Andre Deutsch a publishing house in the early 1950s which bore his name. Despite its small size and meagre means, the house and Athill's reputation gained a great deal of attention in England, not only for the calibre of writers they attracted, but their publishing approach. One of the most controversial incidents occurred early on when the publishing house was presented with an injunction against publishing Norman Mailer's first book, `The Naked and the Dead' because of its profane language.

Athill covers this and many other anecdotes about writers and the writing life in a rich, honest manner.

`Stet' will interest writers as well as avid readers. It gives them a new look at the old days of publishing, a time when dollars didn't rule over good literature.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com

Reading Stet is like taking a seminar in the art and craft of editing and then being invited to tea with the professor afterward. While reading it, I remembered that the relationships most responsible for shaping my professional life were those I enjoyed with professors who made themselves available outside of the classroom or office. I was particularly lucky over the course of college and graduate school to enjoy the company of three wise, interesting, experienced scholars who had spent what amounted to a whole lifetime in the "real world" before beginning their academic careers. That Athill's finely crafted memoir reminded me of my debt to Dr. A-, Mr. R-, and Mrs. S- is the highest recommendation I can give.

Consider this gem:

"[A]n editor must never expect thanks (sometimes they come, but them must always be seen as a bonus). We must always remember that we are only midwives - if we want praise for progeny we must give birth to our own."

Or this (she is writing about the shrinking population of critical readers):

"Of course a lot of them still read; but progressively a smaller lot, and fewer and fewer can be bothered to dig into a book that offers any resistance. Although these people may seem stupid to us, they are no stupider than we are: they just enjoy different things."

Whether you edit church bulletin or your city's daily, whether you answer phones at a small press in the hopes of moving up or you cull gems from the slush pile, don't miss Athill's attempt to prevent her experience from being erased with her passing.

Diana Athill is a superb editor and it shows in the quality of her own writing. She is straightforward, and writes about her experiences in the publishing trade over fifty years without frills or purple passages. For those interested in the world of writers, their books and how they got to market, her thoughts distilled from years of experience opinions leap off the page. As a bonus, she lists a small number of out-of-print books that are favourites of hers and that she thinks her readers might like to read. "Stet" is a glimpse of a largely vanished literary London. I liked it.

A fascinating look into old-world publishing and life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. I really enjoyed all of the wonderful characters and details about the editorial process. Anthill, herself, is an engaging and enjoyable character!

I read Stet, about Diana Athill's career as an editor, after immensely enjoying her later biography (Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir, written as she approached 90).

Athill is a candid, empathetic, and witty observer of herself, her surroundings, and the people (many of them quite driven and some rather loony) with whom she worked as an editor for Andre Deutsch in London for 50 years. In Stet, Athill tells their stories. And, as befits a professional editor, she tells them with wonderful clarity and fluidity.

As Athill's sublime writing carries us along through her work and travels, we learn about London during and after World War II, about the evolution of the publishing business and relationships between writers and editors, about the lives and idiosyncrasies of writers famous and not so famous, and, surprisingly, about the poor and wildly beautiful island of Dominica. All these stories are leavened with Athill's lucid reflections on work, sexuality, feminism, social mores and peccadilloes, and religion and spirituality.

After reading the wonderful Instead of a Letter: A Memoir, I found Stet: An Editor's Life to be a letdown. Diana Athill's memoir of her time working for Andre Deutsch in two different publishing houses (including his eponymous venture, which lasted much longer than his first attempt) seems strangely impersonal. It also contains little of the poetic writing I so enjoyed in Instead of a Letter. Surely publishing can't be so devoid of marvelous conversations and fabulous books, especially not in the days immediately following World War II; but if it isn't, Athill keeps it mostly to herself. Despite the distancing effect of Athill's choices in writing this memoir, however, the book is still worth reading for its picture of a time gone by, and one that may never return as self-publication and internet publishing replace an editor's pen and a publisher's book design.

The book is divided into two sections. The first concerns Athill's career in publishing, which lasted more than fifty years. Athill fell into this career rather than seeking it out, and seems to have enjoyed every minute of it, despite the fact that she never made any real money as an editor. Of particular interest to me is that Athill always insisted on having a balanced life despite her commitment to her work:

"I betrayed my amateurish nature by drawing the line at working outside office hours. The working breakfast, and taking work home at weekends - two activities regarded by many as necessary evidence of commitment, both of them much indulged in by that born publisher, Andre Deutsch - were to me an abomination. Very rarely someone from my work moved over into my private life, but generally office and home were far apart, and home was much more important than office. And whereas I was ashamed of my limitations within the office, I was not ashamed of valuing my private like more highly than my work: that, to my mind, is what everyone ought to do."

Athill instinctively knew what it takes many (including me) half a century to realize. Perhaps, however, it is this distancing, this separation of private life from publishing life that makes this book seem so unemotional; Athill loved her work, but as an intellectual pursuit, a means of making money so that she could live the rest of her life. Still, it is fascinating to read, for example, about Andre Deutsch's disastrous error in offering Philip Roth only a small advance for When She Was Good, and thereby losing him to another publishing house just before he wrote Portnoy's Complaint. Publishing seems so full of "if only" stories, much more than most business pursuits.

The second and more interesting part of the book concerns particular authors with whom Athill worked closely. I've heard of Mordecai Richler and Brian Moore, though I've not read their work, but Alfred Chester and Molly Keane are completely new names to me. Athill writes so well of these individuals that one wishes to seek out their work. I especially want to try Keane's Good Behaviour, a black comedy that seems to have matched the black comedy of Keane's life.

Athill's chapter on Jean Rhys is the germ of what could become a fascinating biography of that writer, but I suspect Athill has no interest in it. Rhys is the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, a tale of Mrs. Rochester (of Jane Eyre fame) when she was a girl living in the West Indies, long before she was consumed by madness. The book is a masterpiece, but Rhys's life, alas, was not. Rhys's struggle with colonialism on Dominica, a very small Caribbean island nation mostly forgotten by the world, was only replaced by her struggle with England, which failed to meet the expectations she was raised to cherish. Her life ultimately fell into such ruin that she lived in an unheated single room in a small bungalow in Cheriton, one of a row of one-story shacks, "crouching grey, makeshift and neglected behind a hedge which almost hid them. They looked as though corrugated iron, asbestos and tarred felt were their main ingredients, and if I had been told that I must live in one of them I would have been appalled." Yet from this squalor came Wide Sargasso Sea, the novel that probably saved her life. It's a fascinating story.

Athill's discussion of V.S. Naipaul is similarly full of interest. In telling his story, Athill remarks on how unfair publishing can be:

"It is natural that a writer who knows himself to be good and who is regularly confirmed in that opinion by critical comment should expect to become a best-seller, but every publisher knows that you don't necessarily become a best-seller by writing well. Of course you don't necessarily have to write badly to do it: it is true that some best-selling books are written astonishingly badly, and equally true that some are written very well. The quality of the writing - even the quality of the thinking - is irrelevant. It is a matter of whether or not a nerve is hit in the wider reading public as opposed to the serious one which is composed of people who are interested in writing as an art."

What better explanation for the likes of Danielle Steele and Dan Brown can there be? And yet, this truth can make life a hell for an author like Naipaul, who became always "displeased with the results of publication, which filled him always with despair, sometimes with anger as well." It could even blind him at times, as when he insisted that Foyles, a wonderful bookstore on Charing Cross Road, didn't have a single copy of his latest book, just published, in stock. Deutsch and Athill walked Naipaul to the store and found two piles of six copies each on the table marked "Recent Publications." Deutsch remarked later that Naipaul seemed to be even more upset at "being done out of his grievance" than he had been originally at the thought that his book wasn't displayed. All of this seems to make Paul Theroux's memoir of the man, Sir Vidia's Shadow, seem less outrageous and more likely true.

I remain eager to read Athill's other books, especially After a Funeral and Somewhere Towards the End. I suspect that those books, dealing as they do with Athill's personal life, will likely contain more spirit and poetry than does Stet. Athill has a writing style that carries you along as on a tidal river, flowing gently from anecdote to quip to sad story without a snag, so that even when the poetry is absent, her writing still moves you on enjoyably. Stet is worth reading, if only to form a more complete picture of the woman who has set her life down in books.

Nice read especially for someone interested in writing. Author writes succinctly and with description that puts the reader in the story.

As people age, most slow down, become more rigid and sour. And then every once in a rare while you run into a person like this author and say - "if this is what 80s are like, take me there!" This book has clarity, power, gossip, sex, intelligence and charity. Oh, how i wish Diana Athill had been my editor!