2025年2月25日 星期二

Diana Athill Dies at 101; Wrote Cleareyed Memoirs of Love and SexSomewhere Towards the End Diana Athill (1917~2019) 2008 《暮色將盡》 四川人民出版社 11刷 Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones. 譯林 聖殿

 黛安娜·阿特希爾去世，享年 101 歲；寫下關於愛與性的清晰回憶錄

2010 年，作家戴安娜·阿特希爾在倫敦。

在接下來的半個世紀裡，她創作了八、九卷回憶錄（取決於如何計算），最後一卷《佛羅倫薩日記》出版於 2016 年，當時她 99 歲。


從她的第一本書《而不是一封信》（1962 年）到最後一本書，阿特希爾女士因其明亮的散文、敏銳的社會敏銳度和傳達深刻的地方感的能力而受到評論家的稱讚。

1979 年的阿特希爾女士。奈保爾、莫迪凱·里奇勒和約翰·厄普代克。阿西爾女士直到 40 多歲才開始寫作。


從整體來看，她的回憶錄構成了一部閃閃發光、發人深省、博學多聞的《慾望城市??? 不好的翻譯》——穿越到佔地數千英畝的英國鄉村莊園和牛津大學。

Diana Athill Dies at 101; Wrote Cleareyed Memoirs of Love and Sex

The author Diana Athill in London in 2010. She attained literary celebrity only in her 90s, with the publication of “Somewhere Towards the End,” the sixth — though by no means the last — volume of her autobiography.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times

Over the next half-century, she produced eight or nine volumes of memoir (it depends on how one counts), the last of which, “A Florence Diary,” appeared in 2016, when she was 99.

From her first volume, “Instead of a Letter” (1962), to her last, Ms. Athill was praised by critics for her luminous prose, gimlet social acuity and ability to convey a profound sense of place.


Ms. Athill in 1979. As a book editor, she presided over a stable of authors that included Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, Mordecai Richler and John Updike. Ms. Athill began writing only in her 40s.Credit...Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Read collectively, her memoirs form a shimmering, meditative, highly erudite “Sex and the Single Girl,” by way of a thousand-acre English country estate and Oxford University.
The contrast between the unbridled subject matter of Ms. Athill’s memoirs and the very bridled background of their author became deliciously apparent the minute she opened her mouth. What emerged, as The Sunday Telegraph put it in 2011, was an English “so beautifully enunciated it makes the queen sound faintly common.”
當阿特希爾女士開口講述回憶錄時，回憶錄中肆無忌憚的主題和作者非常拘謹的背景之間的對比就變得十分明顯。正如《星期日電訊報》在 2011 年所報導的，最終的結果是，英語「發音？如此優美，甚至連女王的名字聽起來都顯得有些普通」。
enunciate
/ɪˈnʌnsɪeɪt,ɪˈnʌnʃɪeɪt/
verb
past tense: enunciated; past participle: enunciated
  1. say or pronounce clearly.
    "she enunciated each word slowly"
    Similar:
    pronounce
    articulate
    say
    speak
    utter
    express
    voice
    vocalize
    • express (a proposition, theory, etc.) in clear or definite terms.
      "a written document enunciating this policy"
      Similar:
      express
      utter
      state
      give voice/expression to
      put into words

WIKIPEDIA

Diana Athill

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diana Athill
Born21 December 1917
Kensington, London, England
Died23 January 2019 (aged 101)
London, England
OccupationLiterary editor, author, publisher
NationalityBritish
Alma materLady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford
GenreNovels and memoirs
Notable worksAfter a Funeral, Somewhere Towards the End
Notable awardsOBE, PEN/Ackerley Prize, Costa Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award
RelativesPhilip Athill (nephew)
Diana Athill's voice
Duration: 38 seconds.
from the BBC programme Front Row, 26 April 2013.[1]

Diana Athill OBE (21 December 1917 – 23 January 2019) was a British literary editor, novelist and memoirist who worked with some of the greatest writers of the 20th century at the London-based publishing company Andre Deutsch Ltd.[2]

Early life

[edit]

Diana Athill was born in Kensington, London, during a World War I Zeppelin bombing raid,[3] daughter of Major Lawrence Francis Imbert Athill (1888–1957) and Alice Katharine (1895–1990), whose father was the biographer William Carr (1862–1925). Diana had a brother, Andrew, and a sister, Patience.[3] Her maternal grandmother was the daughter of James Franck Bright (1832–1920), a Master of University College, Oxford.[4] She was brought up at Ditchingham Hall in Norfolk, a country house owned by her mother's family.[5][6]

Athill graduated from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, in 1939[7] and worked for the BBC throughout the Second World War.[8]

Career

[edit]

After the war, Athill helped her friend André Deutsch establish the publishing house Allan Wingate, and five years later, in 1952, she was a founding director of the publishing company that was given his name.[9] She worked closely with many Deutsch authors, including Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Mordecai Richler, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rhys, Gitta Sereny, Brian Moore, V. S. Naipaul, Molly Keane, Stevie Smith, Jack Kerouac, Charles Gidley Wheeler, Margaret Atwood, and David Gurr.[10][11]

Athill retired from Deutsch in 1993 at the age of 75, after more than 50 years in publishing.[3] She continued to influence the literary world through her revealing memoirs about her editorial career.

The first book of her own writing to appear was the short story collection An Unavoidable Delay (1962), and she published two further works of fiction: a novel entitled Don't Look at Me Like That (1967) and in 2011 another volume of stories, Midsummer Night in the Workhouse. She was best known, however, for her books of memoirs, the first of which was Instead of a Letter in 1963. These memoirs were not written in chronological order, Yesterday Morning (2002) being the account of her childhood. She also translated various works from French.

She appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2004 at the age of 86 and selected a recording of Haydn's The Creation as the most valued of the eight records and Thackeray's Vanity Fair as the book.[12]

In 2008, she won the Costa Book Award for her memoir Somewhere Towards The End, a book about old age.[13] For the same book, she also received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2009.[14]

Athill was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours for services to literature.[15]

In June 2010, she was the subject of a BBC documentary, Growing Old Disgracefully, part of the Imagine series.[16] In 2013, she was listed as one of the 50 best-dressed over-50s by The Guardian.[17]

In 2011, Granta Books published Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend, a collection of letters from Athill to the American poet Edward Field chronicling their intimate correspondence spanning more than 30 years (he kept all her letters, she kept none of his).[18][19] Granta Books published two further titles by her: Alive, Alive Oh!: And Other Things That Matter in 2015 and A Florence Diary in 2016.

Personal life

[edit]

According to journalist Mick Brown, "She attributes her flight from convention to her first love, Tony Irvine, an RAF pilot with whom she fell in love at the age of 15, and who was blessed, she says, 'with a very open approach to life.'"[20] The failure of her relationship with Irvine (referred to as Paul in Instead of a Letter),[11] her "great love", "blighted" many years: "My affairs after that, I kept them trivial if I possibly could. I was frightened of intensity, because I knew I was going to be hurt."[20] Irvine went to war in Egypt, and eventually stopped replying to Athill's letters, then two years later requested an end to their engagement.[3] At the age of 43, Athill suffered a miscarriage.[3]

She called herself a "sucker for oppressed foreigners", an inclination she characterized as a "funny kink" in her maternal instinct: "I never particularly wanted children, but it came out in liking lame ducks."[20] One lover, the Egyptian author Waguih Ghali, a depressive, committed suicide in her flat. Her most remarkable affair, about which she later wrote a book, was "a fleeting, and distinctly odd" relationship with Hakim Jamal, an American Black radical who asserted he was God and was a cousin of Malcolm X. Jamal's other lover, Gale Benson, was murdered by Trinidadian Black Power leader Michael X. Jamal was killed by others a year later.[20] Athill's account of these events was published in 1993 as Make Believe: A True Story.

Her longest relationship was with the Jamaican playwright Barry Reckord. The affair lasted eight years, but he shared her flat for forty. She described it as a "detached" sort of marriage.[20]

She moved into a flat in a north London residence for the "active elderly" at the end of 2009,[21] saying about this decision: "Almost at once on arrival at the home I knew that it was going to suit me. And sure enough, it does. A life free of worries in a snug little nest....".[22] Even during her old age, she reemphasized that she had no regrets about not having her own children, saying: "I dearly love certain young people of my acquaintance and am happy to have them in my life, but am I sorry that they are not my descendants? No...."[23]

Athill died at a hospice in London on 23 January 2019, aged 101, following a short illness.[24][25][26]

Her nephew and heir, the art historian Philip Athill,[27] is managing director of the dealership and gallery, Abbott and Holder.[28]

Selected bibliography

[edit]

Fiction

[edit]

Autobiography

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Diana Athill". Front Row. 26 April 2013. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  2. ^ Athill, Diana (5 January 2008), "'Getting things right': Recalling her life as one of the 20th century's most acclaimed editors, Diana Athill, who has just turned 90, was a pioneer of the confessional memoir. Her new book is about ageing". The Guardian.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Pattullo, Polly (24 January 2019), "Diana Athill obituary" in The Guardian. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  4. ^ "Mr. William Carr". The Times. London. 29 January 1925. p. 7.
  5. ^ "Parks and Gardens UK". Archived from the original on 26 February 2012.
  6. ^ Preston, John (11 January 2011), "Diana Athill: Being the other woman was what I was best at", The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 November 2016.
  7. ^ Prominent alumni, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, UK.
  8. ^ Cambridge Women's Peace Collective (1984). My Country is the Whole World: An Anthology of Women's Work on Peace and War. Pandora Press. p. 140. ISBN 978-0-86358-004-8. Retrieved 24 May 2021. Worked for the BBC during the Second World War and afterwards as a publisher.
  9. ^ Athill, Diana (3 August 2001), Chapter One, Stet. Excerpted in The Guardian.
  10. ^ "Stet: An Editor's Life (review)", Publishers Weekly, 1 March 2001.
  11. ^ Jump up to:a b Cochrane, Kira (5 January 2009), "Not bad for 91", The Guardian.
  12. ^ "Diana Athill". Desert Island Discs. BBC. 2004. Retrieved 3 July 2010.
  13. ^ "Costa Winners 2006 – present" (PDF). costabookawards.com. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 October 2012. Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  14. ^ "All Past National Book Critics Award Winners and Finalists". bookcritics.org. Archived from the original on 27 April 2019. Retrieved 3 January 2013.
  15. ^ "No. 58929". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2008. p. 9.
  16. ^ Athill, Diana (29 June 2010). "Diana Athill: 'Who is that woman who looks like me?'". The Telegraph.
  17. ^ Cartner-Morley, Jess (28 March 2013). "The 50 best-dressed over-50s – in pictures". The Guardian.
  18. ^ "Diana Athill introduces Instead of a Book: Letters to a Friend", YouTube, 3 November 2011.
  19. ^ Eichenberger, Bill (7 June 2012), "Diana Athill's 'Letters to a Friend' is one side of an interesting friendship", Cleveland.com.
  20. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Brown, Mick (23 September 2011), "Diana Athill on letters, lovers & letting go". The Telegraph. Retrieved 21 August 2012.
  21. ^ Wagner, Erica "Diana Athill", The Gentlewoman, Issue 14, Autumn & Winter 2016.
  22. ^ Athill, Diana (17 April 2009). "Diana Athill: Why I moved into an old people's home". The Guardian.
  23. ^ Athill, Diana (16 November 2012). "Diana Athill: why I never became a gran". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
  24. ^ "Writer Diana Athill dies aged 101". BBC News. 24 January 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.
  25. ^ Lea, Richard (24 January 2019). "Diana Athill, writer and editor, dies aged 101". The Guardian.
  26. ^ Fox, Margalit (24 January 2019). "Diana Athill Dies at 101; Wrote Cleareyed Memoirs of Love and Sex". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  27. ^ Armitstead, Claire (15 December 2017). "Diana Athill: 'Enjoy yourself as much as you can without doing any damage to other people'". The Guardian. Retrieved 9 February 2019. Her beloved nephew and heir, Phil Athill
  28. ^ "Gallery History". Abbott and Holder. Archived from the original on 9 February 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2019.
  29. ^ Stein, Sadie (22 July 2023). "Diana Athill's Only Novel, About Coming of Age in 1950s London". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
  30. ^ "A Review of Diana Athill's Stet: An Editor's Life". theeditingco.com. Retrieved 2 August 2024.
[edit]


Tain't No Sin (To Dance Around in Your Bones)
Words by Edgar Leslie, Music by Walter Donaldson
Verse: Dancing may do this and that, and help you take off lots of fat.
But I'm no friend of dancing when it's hot.
So if you are a dancing fool, who loves to dance but can't keep cool,
Bear in mind the idea that I've got.
Chorus: When it gets too hot for comfort, and you can't get ice cream cones,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
When the lazy syncopation of the music softly moans,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
The polar bears aren't green up in Greenland, they've got the right idea.
They think it's great to refrigerate while we all cremate down here.
Just be like those Bamboo Babies, in the South Sea tropic zones,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
Band takes two choruses
Verse 1: Dancing may do this and that, and help you take off excess fat.
But I'm no friend of dancing when it's hot. No I'm not.
So if you are a dancing fool, who loves to dance but can't keep cool,
Bear in mind this idea that I've got.
Chorus: When you're calling up your sweetie in those hot house telephones,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
When you're on a crowded dance floor, near those red hot saxophones,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
Just take a look at the girls while they're dancing. Notice the way that they're dressed.
They wear silken clothes without any hose and nobody knows the rest.
If a gal wears X-ray dresses, and shows everything she owns,
Tain't no sin to take off your skin…
Band phrase
Tain't no sin to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
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