RIP Diana Athill

Flipping through radio stations about a month ago, breezing through a little bit of BBC News, I suddenly heard the name Diana Athill, and gasped as I realized that this great English author and editor had died (on 1/23/19). Although she was 101 years old, I was shocked; somehow, as I enjoyed and savored her wonderful books, especially her memoirs, over the years, I had come to believe at some level that she would never die. Athill was a respected, even legendary, editor for the publisher Andre Deutsch in London for 50 years, working with such writers as Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, John Updike, Simone de Beauvoir, V.S. Naipaul, Margaret Atwood, and many more. In later years she wrote a series of memoirs, including “Stet,” “Somewhere Towards the End,” and “Alive, Alive Oh!” (See my blogposts of 3/5/10, 6/9/12, and 2/11/16 about Athill and her work.) Her writing provides a fascinating and revealing window into her literary life, as well as her complicated and in some ways unconventional personal life; this writing is wonderful, candid, vivid and generous. Athill was a strong, independent woman, and wrote fearlessly. She was, among other things, a great model of how to age; she was honest about the ups and downs of that process as she was about everything else. I admired her greatly, and her writing gave me great pleasure. I am sad that there will be no more books from her.