MY GREEN AGE: A Memoir

No other magazine is so associative of a solid, courteous lifestyle -- integrity, Boston, the St. Botolph Club -- as the Atlantic Monthly, and this memoir by its former editor (for 28 years) covering what he calls his green age (up to 41) has the gentle, soft patina of the fine antiques one expects to find in a Beacon Hill townhouse. And Weeks, although born in New Jersey, is as Bostonian as any Apley, Cabot or Lowell. Harvard, class of '22 (it's a world in which such appellations are not ignored), a maturing stint with the American Field Service during World War I, then a scholarship to Cambridge, later a salesman for the not altogether savory publisher Horace Liveright (Weeks, calling on his first account, stopped off on his way to a country outing wearing tennis whites and racquet in hand) -- the chain of events that shaped a prominent career. A gracious, leisurely book--and if publishing ever was an occupation of gentlemen, it's editors like Weeks who made it so.