By Cynthia Haven
Roger and Joe Ackerley, 1913 (Photo by permission of Harold Ober Associates)
J.R. Ackerley led an outwardly quiet life between his flat in suburban Putney and his London office at The Listener, the BBC’s weekly magazine, where he worked from 1935 to 1959. Though he was the leading literary editor of his generation, he was in no hurry to publish his own work – hence, his controversial memoir appeared posthumously.
Now his following is growing. It’s likely to expand further when Stanford’s “Another Look” book club takes on My Father and Myself, exploring Ackerley’s life as a gay man and his determined outing of long-held family secrets. A book discussion will be held Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the Stanford Humanities Center’s Levinthal Hall. The event is free and open to the public.
The evening will be moderated by Terry Castle, professor of English and author of The Professor and Other Writings. She will be joined by Adrian Daub, an associate professor of German studies, and Jeffrey Fraenkel, founder of San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery for photography. The event launches the second year of “Another Look,” founded by the English/Creative Writing Department.
It’s not the first time Stanford has had a role in beating the drums for My Father and Myself. When Edwin Frank, a former Stegner Fellow in Stanford’s Creative Writing Program, founded the New York Review Books Classics in 1999, none of Ackerley’s books were in print. Frank republished all four – they were among the first titles of the eminent series that rediscovers out-of-the-way classics.
Given current critical esteem, their former obscurity is surprising, but Frank cites several reasons why this was so. “He published one book early on, and it was a success. Then he didn’t write anything for years on end. If you do that, you will have a more vulnerable career as a writer,” he explained. “My Dog Tulip was published privately. My Father and Myself was posthumous. We Think the World of You was published in 1963 – it was a relatively open picture of a gay relationship between two none-too-appealing people.”
Read the rest here.