Let Me Finish Review

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Let Me Finish Review
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 words and sentiment that produced not only the industry's top guidebook for grammar and writing, but also one of the best children's books ever written. In "Twice Christmas," Angell marries --- or should I say divorces --- his two fathers by uniting them with the one thing they had in common: his mother. With almost unnatural clarity, he captures the awkward essence of growing up in a broken home by recounting the details of possibly the most important morning of a young boy's life --- Christmas morning --- first at his father's and then again, after an overstuffed and anxious taxi ride across town, at his mother's/Andy's.
Readers who light up at the mention of celebrity will delight in Angell's brief references to W. Somerset Maugham and Vladimir Nabokov, and will get a kick out of his recollections of fellow New Yorker staffers Charles McGrath, William Shawn, founder Harold Ross, William Mazwell and the like. But it is his dance with the familiar in LET ME FINISH that reaps its due reward. "Life is tough and brimming with loss, and the most we can do about it is to glimpse ourselves clear now and then, and find out what we feel about familiar scenes and recurring faces this time around."
--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling
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