Celebrating DeWitt Henry

I've been re-reading DeWitt Henry these past few days—all in anticipation of his appearance tonight at the Radnor Memorial Library.

(Be there.)

He's a man of letters, this DeWitt Henry.  An essayist, novelist, and memoirist whose books include Safe Suicide, Sweet Dreams, and The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts.  And while he taught at Harvard and chaired the Emerson Writing, Literature, and Publishing department (translation:  he has been living in Boston for a very long time), his roots are here, where I live, along the storied Main Line.

If you know DeWitt Henry as one of the founding editors of the esteemed literary magazine Ploughshares (for he is that, too), so be it.  If you are one of his nearly 5,000 Facebook friends, well—but—of course you are.  But I am one of those who has the privilege of reading a passage like the one below (from Sweet Dreams) and nodding my head in recognition, for I have been there.  I live there.  Indeed, my son has worked at this very theater (seasonally, of course) for many, many years.

Welcome Home, DeWitt. 

The Anthony Wayne Theater, our single movie theater, was ornately Victorian, with an overhanging marquee outside and a castle-like facade.  The three-sided ticket booth, with a circle to speak through and a loop to get your tickets, was out front under the shelter of a marquee.