Overview

Novelist, critic, essayist, screenwriter, teacher, traveler, and art aficionado, Nicholas Delbanco has here compiled a mosaic of his life as he glances backwards and forwards from the vantage point of his eightieth year. Each home relocation with its inevitable remodeling becomes a metaphor for the reconstruction of the self over his lifetime. In episodic riffs, Still Life at Eighty revisits seven houses where Delbanco welcomed a panoply of literati, such as Mary Ruefle, Mary Lee Settle, Mary Robison, John Ashbery, John Cheever, John Irving, and John Updike. Each abode becomes a receptacle of memory, as he recalls his friendships with the likes of James Baldwin, Grace Paley, Frederick Busch, Donald Barthelme, and Russell Banks. Still Life at Eighty is saturated with artistic appreciation, which colors Delbanco's life from early childhood to his eightieth year. The grandson of collectors (whose paintings were plundered by the Nazis), nephew of a London gallerist, son of an accomplished painter, and a collector himself, Delbanco summons his reminiscences of art, artifacts, and artists as he pivots from a youthful artistic apprenticeship to become a prolific professional writer, sustained, and inspired by his wife of fifty-three years, Elena; his daughters, Francesca and Andrea; and five granddaughters. Delbanco finds solace in the things of this world: a Biedermeier desk, an Ekoi mask, and an instrument case that held the fabled Countess of Stanlein ex-Paganini Stradivarius Violoncello of 1707-all reminders of a treasured past. Together with these cherished artifacts, former homes, and the myriad writers and artists who slip in and out of this erudite memoir, Still Life at Eighty makes readers privy not only to Delbanco's rich experiences, but also to the vast aesthetic wealth of his long life.

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9781942134985

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Reviews

"""It is fitting that Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age has demonstrated his own lastingness with this aptly titled, meditative memoir, an exquisite retrospective, on the occasion of his 80th birthday."" - Paul Theroux novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). ""Still Life at Eighty is a triumphant, wise, and elegant memoir that beautifully explores the experience of aging, the joy of life, the inevitability of its end, and Delbanco's remarkably influential journey through the arts.""--Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, A National Book Award winner ""A life well lived, well remembered, supremely well written. Houses, family, books, fellow writers, mentors, protégés, ghosts - the wide-eyed younger self meets the wise man looking back with gratitude - gratitude absolute. A joy, an affirmation, a life worth reading: Nicholas Delbanco does it again.""--James Carroll, author of The Cloister ""John Updike once said that Nicholas Delbanco struggles with his strengths the way other writers struggle with their weaknesses. Delbanco's strengths remain in full force in Still Life at Eighty, but the fluency, the self-reflexivity, the allusiveness and elusiveness, the wit are in service here to what feels like something new: in the face of mortality, a chastened and measured modesty and humility and melancholy. The Delbanco book I've been waiting and wanting to read for half my life. Bravo."" --David Shields, author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Black Planet, and Other People: Takes & Mistakes ""Delbanco, like [Andre] Malraux, an excellent writer is among us, and if we neglect him....we shall have to apologize to posterity."" -- John Leonard, former New York Times Critic ""Let [this] writer loose in his own vineyard and he'll make astonishing wine.""-- Rosellen Brown, author of numerous novels including Tender Mercies, Before and After, and I am Homeless If This is Not My Home ""He may know more than just about anyone about the serious play that is literary life.""--Lorrie Moore, novelist and short-story writer, author of numerous books including Birds of America and Anagrams"

"""It is fitting that Nicholas Delbanco, author of Lastingness: The Art of Old Age has demonstrated his own lastingness with this aptly titled, meditative memoir, an exquisite retrospective, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.""--Paul Theroux, novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar (1975) ""Still Life at Eighty is a triumphant, wise, and elegant memoir that beautifully explores the experience of aging, the joy of life, the inevitability of its end, and Delbanco's remarkably influential journey through the arts.""--Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, A National Book Award winner ""A life well lived, well remembered, supremely well written. Houses, family, books, fellow writers, mentors, prot�g�s, ghosts - the wide-eyed younger self meets the wise man looking back with gratitude - gratitude absolute. A joy, an affirmation, a life worth reading: Nicholas Delbanco does it again.""--James Carroll, author of The Cloister ""John Updike once said that Nicholas Delbanco struggles with his strengths the way other writers struggle with their weaknesses. Delbanco's strengths remain in full force in Still Life at Eighty, but the fluency, the self-reflexivity, the allusiveness and elusiveness, the wit are in service here to what feels like something new: in the face of mortality, a chastened and measured modesty and humility and melancholy. The Delbanco book I've been waiting and wanting to read for half my life. Bravo.""--David Shields, author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Black Planet, and Other People: Takes & Mistakes ""Delbanco, like [Andre] Malraux, an excellent writer is among us, and if we neglect him....we shall have to apologize to posterity.""--John Leonard, former New York Times Critic ""Let [this] writer loose in his own vineyard and he'll make astonishing wine.""--Rosellen Brown, author of numerous novels including Tender Mercies, Before and After, and I am Homeless If This is Not My Home ""He may know more than just about anyone about the serious play that is literary life.""--Lorrie Moore, novelist and short-story writer, author of numerous books including Birds of America and Anagrams"

"""Nowadays the word ""memoir"" can conjure up gruesome tales of abuse, crime, and poverty. Happily, Nicholas Delbanco's backward look at age 80 is a welcome rarity: this richly gifted author has been blessed with a fortunate life. Born in wartime into a large German Jewish family of successful art dealers who emigrated to New York, he completed his history of western art at 12 years old--a foretaste of well-received and better spelled books of fiction, essays, biography and criticism. Delbanco's birthday is time for a reckoning--and reckon he does. Scores of houses (""repositories of memory""); rollicking friendships with the major writers of his time; a family troupe of loving women. Altogether the book is a delight and an education, in its perusal of the stages of life and the wisdom that accrues. Not to mention the impeccable grace that has informed his every endeavor.""--Lynn Sharon Schwartz, a celebrated author of award-winning novels include Rough Strife, Leaving Brooklyn and Disturbances in the Field. She lives in New York City and is currently faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. ""Still Life at Eighty is a triumphant, wise, and elegant memoir that beautifully explores the experience of aging, the joy of life, the inevitability of its end, and Delbanco's remarkably influential journey through the arts.""--Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage, A National Book Award winner ""A life well lived, well remembered, supremely well written. Houses, family, books, fellow writers, mentors, prot�g�s, ghosts - the wide-eyed younger self meets the wise man looking back with gratitude - gratitude absolute. A joy, an affirmation, a life worth reading: Nicholas Delbanco does it again.""--James Carroll, author of The Cloister ""John Updike once said that Nicholas Delbanco struggles with his strengths the way other writers struggle with their weaknesses. Delbanco's strengths remain in full force in Still Life at Eighty, but the fluency, the self-reflexivity, the allusiveness and elusiveness, the wit are in service here to what feels like something new: in the face of mortality, a chastened and measured modesty and humility and melancholy. The Delbanco book I've been waiting and wanting to read for half my life. Bravo.""--David Shields, author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead, Black Planet, and Other People: Takes & Mistakes ""Delbanco, like [Andre] Malraux, an excellent writer is among us, and if we neglect him....we shall have to apologize to posterity.""--John Leonard, former New York Times Critic ""Let [this] writer loose in his own vineyard and he'll make astonishing wine.""--Rosellen Brown, author of numerous novels including Tender Mercies, Before and After, and I am Homeless If This is Not My Home ""He may know more than just about anyone about the serious play that is literary life.""--Lorrie Moore, novelist and short-story writer, author of numerous books including Birds of America and Anagrams"

Author Information

Nicholas Delbanco is the author of more than thirty works of fiction and non-fiction. At the University of Michigan from which he retired as the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor in English-he was Director of the Helen Zell Writers' Program and, for twenty-five years, the Hopwood Awards. As the founding Director of the Bennington Summer Writing Workshops, he created the low-residency MFA program. Delbanco is a recipient of the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and twice awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Prose Fiction. He has served as Chair of the Fiction Panel for the National Book Awards, and as a judge for the Pulitzer Prize. With his wife, Elena, he divides his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.

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