As she notes, there are many books about personal growth, but few about what she calls "falling away." An Oxford graduate who never married, Athill is as frank about the waning of sexual desire, once so central to her existence, as she is about her numerous affairs, often with married men. Naipaul and Jean Rhys, Diana Athill chronicled her literary career in an earlier, equally vivacious memoir, Stet (2000). There is something tremendously heartening about a no-nonsense nonagenarian who writes with clarity, wit and unblinking frankness about getting old and facing death. He will sign copies of his book, which you may buy at the talk.Somewhere Towards The End Somewhere Towards the End, by Diana Athill, hardcover, 183 pages, Norton, list price: $24.95 “I’m not cheerful and I have no money – that is the basic point of it.”Ĭo-sponsored by the Radnor Historical Society and Friends of Radnor Memorial Library, Tad Friend’s talk starts at 7:30 p.m. “My brother always won and I always came in last,” he stated nonchalantly. For every deed, a quarter would be added to each child’s respective jar, and at the end of the year whoever had their jar filled the most would have their money doubled. “It hasn’t changed in such a way that I cannot recognize it,” pointed out the 47-year-old author.Īs for the curious title of the book, “Cheerful Money,” he explained it refers to his parents’ practice of rewarding him and his siblings for performing a chore around the house or just for being upbeat, not sulky. He mentions Readers’ Forum in Wayne and of course his beloved Shipley School. The Main Line landmarks of his youth remain. When the writer returns to his roots he doesn’t expect much to be different from his student days. “I think that the Main Line is a lovely place for kids to grow up,” but adds, perhaps not to spend one’s whole life in. As a youth, he related, he thought the Main Line experience was great his opinion is more tempered now. Is being a Main Line WASP a good thing or a bad thing then? “It’s a mix,” he explained, saying he tries to point out the good and bad of such a disposition in his book. He has returned to his alma mater over the years including to speak during commencement, which also marked the school’s 100th anniversary, in 1994. At Shipley, he said, “I started enjoying my classes and working hard.” He co-edited the school paper and played basketball, tennis and soccer. He said the private school was a “life preserver,” since public school was not the best fit for the 104-pound, 5-foot-tall boy (“puberty had not yet graced me,” he recalled). Prominently mentioned in his book is the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, where he transferred to in the 10th grade from public school, graduating in 1980, and his high-school crushes and escapades. Today the Brooklyn resident takes his 4-year-old twins, Walker and Addie, to visit his father in Villanova, where his parents moved to in 1990. Delving into his blue-blood lineage prompted him to write a fuller account of it, warts and all.įriend originally lived in Swarthmore, where his father, Theodore, served starting in 1973 as president of the college during his college days at Harvard, where he majored in English, he would come to his parents’ home in Radnor, where they moved to in 1982. He elaborated on her aspirations and disappointments. The book was originally influenced by an article he wrote for The New Yorker three years after his mother died in 2005. 28.ĭuring an interview this week he described his 351-page book as both a personal memoir and “a social history of WASPs.” In his book he talks about his family – there is even a “somewhat simplified” family tree – including how he got his name, Theodore Porter Friend (“my bassoon solo of an appellation”). Today he is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where he has worked since 1998, penning the column “Letter from California.” And it will take him back to the Main Line, to the Radnor Library, where he will talk about his book on Tuesday, Sept. It took him to Harvard and later to become a successful magazine writer. “What nags at me about the Main Line was how intensely I admired it, and how little thought I gave to where it might take me.” The Main Line has nurtured Tad Friend just like the roots of his family tree that run deep in his new book, “Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor.” He writes:
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