Let Me Finish

by Roger Angell

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151013500
• ISBN13: 9780151013500
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A Pleasure to Read

I look forward to reading this again and again to enjoy Angell's flowing and immaculate use of language and to visit again and again with his friends and family.

Humor, Sadness, Excellent Little Stories

This biography of a sort is really a series of stories that reflect important parts of his life. Being a supurb writer his little vignettes are a mixture of humor, history, personal views, and whatever he wants to say. I think I liked the story of his Army Air Corp life during World War II the best. The idea of the Army losing his paperwork so that effectively he didn't exist sort of told me that the Army hadn't changed when I went in a generation later. Angell is best known as a baseball writer and there's some baseball here, but there's a lot more. As he says, he didn't intend to write a biography, he just wrote a few stories about things in his past. Later on he looked at them and here was a book. It's delightful reading. Not too serious, and he's not going to tell you 'I was born...' Born to well off, if not rich parents, he sums up his life: 'I've had a life sheltered by privilege, and engrossing work, and shot through with good luck.' That almost sums up the book as well.

more than a baseball writer

Roger Angell's LET ME FINISH is a collection of autobiographical essays by a writer best known for his New Yorker magazine articles on the World Series, and his profiles of Bob Gibson, David Cone, etc. (He also wrote the baseball classic THE SUMMER GAME.) Angell was born in 1920, and grew to adulthood in New York City. LET ME FINISH is a beautifully written account of Angell's life told in relatively brief chapters. There is an essay about traveling America by automobile in 1920's and 30's. His mother's (Katherine Sargent, who was a New Yorker magazine editor) divorce from Roger's father, and her subsequent marriage to E. B. ("Andy") White, author of STUART LITTLE and CHARLOTTE'S WEB, is also detailed. There are (to relate a few) essays on skipping school to go to the movies, a trip by bus with a pal and a sick snake to the zoo's reptile attendent for treatment (for the snake), and a memorable round of golf with an "older woman". Sounds dull and boring perhaps, but Angell's marvelous gift for using words makes for pleasurable reading. The final essay, "Hard Lines", is about the loss of loved ones, and might bring a tear to the eye and a lump to the throat. An excellent book. One well worth your time.

A fun collection of short vignettes looking back on one man's life

For connoisseurs of New Yorker fiction editor and contributor Roger Angell's celebrated writings on all things baseball (GAME TIME, A PITCHER'S STORY, LATE INNINGS, etc.), his latest offering will be a change of pace. This collection of short vignettes, which was written in the last three years and loosely tied together into memoir format, is both slower going (rightly so) yet more free-flowing than his previous books. Overflowing with remembrances of past events, familial anecdotes, New Yorker insides and general day-to-day musings, LET ME FINISH is both a pleasure to read and an insightful look into the nooks and crannies of one man's lifetime over the last 70 or so years. Although many may find all of the chapters interesting merely as records of a life lived, there are a few sections that stand out above the rest. In "Romance," Angell beautifully illustrates America's love affair with the open road by recounting various car trips taken during his childhood. He perfectly captures the quiet freedom unleashed when behind the wheel or in the back of a moving vehicle and pinpoints one of those quintessential moments when all seems right in the world and full of promise: "There were many reasons for my feeling so happy. We were on our way. I had seen a dawn...Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked, would marry me, but first there was a long trip; many hours and towns interceded between me and that encounter." Like many kids who grew up during the Prohibition era and the Depression, Angell was utterly bewitched with the burgeoning world of cinema. There was nothing quite like skipping school to sit in the delicious darkness of a movie theater, and every chance he got, he would treat himself to the latest double feature. Simple and sweet, the chapter entitled "Movie Kid" is pure delight and once again captures a period of time long since forgotten in the age of blockbuster films. "Anyone who was the wrong age or in the wrong place for this stuff --- my parents and my children, for instance, and even those who picked it up later from videos and American-studies classes --- never quite caught up. We were the lucky ones, we first citizens of film, and we trusted the movies for the rest of our lives." Three of the most vivid and nostalgic chapters are "The King of the Forest," "Andy" and "Twice Christmas," in which Angell examines his roots. In "The King of the Forest," he pokes and prods at the memory of his father --- the aforementioned "King" in the title --- portraying him with an honesty and awe that only a son's gaze could muster. He lays bare his father's infidelities (a reason for his mother's departure) yet still manages to convey his utter respect and love for him as a father figure. In "Andy," he gives due reverence to his stepfather, the renowned author and editor E. B. White (STUART LITTLE, CHARLOTTE'S WEB, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE). By Angell's depiction, Andy seems like a kind man, full of wisdom, talent, and the one-of-a-kind hankering for

A very pleasurable escape

I don't think its every writer's responsibility to tackle the harsh truths about life on earth--these things: war, famine, poverty, violence, racism, overall unfairness, grief and unhappiness--exist eternally. However, the personalities who "people" life are ephemeral and for the most part, if we're lucky, it's our relationship to those personalities and the times spent with them that make being alive on earth worthwhile. I think Roger Angell has captured those fleeting feelings and those tender personalities in a very emotionally satisfying way, regardless of whether or not he has lived a life of seeming privilege. These essays will deftly help you escape the world of CNN's Situation Room, et al, for awhile. The book will probably make you wish you could recall your own childhood memories in such fond detail, and it will certainly make you hope your own life will be remembered by others with such a sense of wistful tolerance and easy forgiveness.