Let Me Finish - Paperback

by Roger Angell (Author)

Widely known as an original and graceful writer, Roger Angell has developed a devoted following through his essays in the New Yorker. Now, in Let Me Finish, a deeply personal, fresh form of autobiography, he takes an unsentimental look at his early days as a boy growing up in Prohibition-era New York with a remarkable father; a mother, Katharine White, who was a founding editor of the New Yorker; and a famous stepfather, the writer E. B. White.

Intimate, funny, and moving portraits form the book's centerpiece as Angell remembers his surprising relatives, his early attraction to baseball in the time of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio, and his vivid colleagues during a long career as a New Yorker writer and editor. Infused with pleasure and sadness, Angell's disarming memoir also evokes an attachment to life's better moments.

Front Jacket

Here, at home inside a Jane Austen novel, I passed my college weekends, carving Sunday roasts and getting the station wagon serviced, explaining the double finesse in bridge, lacing up ice skates, sharing by radio the fall of Paris and the night bombings of London. . . having fallen not just in love but into a family. -- from Let Me Finish
Roger Angell has developed a broad and devoted following through his writings in the New Yorker and as the leading baseball writer of our time. Turning to more personal matters, he has produced a fresh form of autobiography in this unsentimental look at his early days as a boy growing up in Prohibition-era New York with a remarkable father; a mother, Katharine White, who was a founding editor of the New Yorker; and a famous stepfather, the writer E. B. White. Intimate, funny, and moving portraits form the book's centerpiece as Angell remembers his unusual relatives, his attachment to baseball in the time of Ruth and Gehrig and the young Joe DiMaggio, and his vivid colleagues during his long career as a New Yorker writer and editor. Infused with pleasure and sadness, Angell's new book offers a fresh view of the insistence of memory. "Like it or not," he writes, "we geezers are not the curators of this unstable repository of trifling or tragic days but only the screenwriters and directors of the latest revival."

Back Jacket

A lovely book and an honest one . . . A genuinely grown-up book, a rare gem indeed in our pubescent age. Washington Post Book World

In this acclaimed autobiography, Roger Angell takes an unsentimental look at his early days as a boy growing up in Prohibition-era New York with a remarkable father; a mother, Katharine White, who was a founding editor of the New Yorker; and a famous stepfather, the writer E. B. White. In intimate, funny, and moving portraits, Angell remembers his surprising relatives, his early attraction to baseball in the time of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio, and his vivid colleagues during a long career as a New Yorker writer and editor. Infused with pleasure and sadness, Angell s disarming memoir evokes an attachment to life s better moments.

"Witty, worldly, deeply elegiac, and in places heartbreaking . . . a performance we can all be thankful for." Boston Globe

"Graceful and garrulous. If ever someone was raised to write and edit, it was Angell." USA Today

ROGER ANGELL began contributing to the New Yorker in 1944 and joined the staff as a fiction editor in 1956. He is the author of seven celebrated baseball books and two collections of short stories and humor. He lives in New York and Maine."