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A Raucous Salute to Doctors, Nurses, Frontline Workers

Over the past seven weeks, most nights of the lockdown imposed during the pandemic, when 7pm rolls around—the time when New Yorkers have been saluting essential workers—I’ve been in my apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, where I ring a small bell I have, or bang a letter opener on my metal travel mug. However, tonight I had gone out for a walk around 6:40, and stayed outside to experience tonight’s clamor at the top of the hour from ground level. It’s an enjoyable release when everyone gets to share their appreciation of people who can’t stay locked in, who go to work, save lives, drive public transit, and make sure we can buy food. When this is over, there won’t be much to miss about it, but I’ll be happy to remember the raucous celebrations.


 

A Tribute to the Old Man of the Mountain, Franconia Notch, White Mountains—RIP

I was extremely lucky to spend a good chunk of my young adult years as a student at Franconia College, in Franconia, New Hampshire, located in the White Mountains, near the dramatic topographical feature called Franconia Notch. I made many close friends while a student at the college from 1973-77, like the late Robert Henry Adams and Karl Petrovich, with whom I formed a troika (the power trio’s pictured below), both of them lost to me along the way, sadly, and other good friends whom I still know and appreciate today. Franconia College was an experimental institution, part of the ferment of the times, an educational environment I relished, and am still grateful I experienced. The scenery that I saw everyday in the area and from a small cabin where I lived with my black Lab Noah was majestic, as pictures here will show.
I often photographed the jut-jawed Old Man of the Mountain, aka The Great Stone Face and The Profile, a historic feature of the landscape that humans began marveling at centuries long before New Hampshire was settled by descendants of European colonists. In later decades, the craggy rock face was held together by cables and guy wires, all of which collapsed in 2003.


Going back to the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne published “The Great Stone Face” in 1850, a tale about the denizens of the region, and the legendary profile that towered above them. He wrote, “It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, withs long bridge, and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.” 

Click here for more pictures.

On Spring Evenings During the 2020 Pandemic

The unfolding virus crisis, officially a pandemic since March 11, has now stretched on for more than three months, if one goes back to the first known case in the US, reported by ABC News, from Jan. 21  in Washington state. The first news report from Wuhan was even before that, the last day of 2019, Dec. 31.

There are many aspects of this situation, and the experience of living through it, that I ponder every day, beginning with the terrible suffering and sickness so many are enduring, and their families and friends, and the heroic efforts of doctors, nurses, medical techs, aides, cleaners, plus essential workers like bus drivers, cabbies, and grocery store checkers. After the grief and the solidarity I feel on a regular basis, there’s another experiential element that hits me every day in the late afternoons and early evenings. The time now being 7pm on the Upper West Side of Manhattan—where we just held our daily raucous salute to essential workers—I’m particularly mindful of it right now.

As shown above, when the crisis began building it was still late Winter. Though we didn’t have much snow this winter, it was very cold in February, in the 20s. I got a taxing dry cough then, which worried me. I thought I might’ve acquired it, or worsened it, during a cold bike ride I took one late afternoon in February, when I imbibed too much cold air, deep in to my lungs. This can happen while cycling, I’ve found, because when you’re pedaling and pumping hard, standing up on the pedals, out of the saddle going up hill, as I do in Riverside Park, I’m really breathing hard. That’s what had happened to me, I figured, though with word of the virus intensifying, I worried, too. (The cough persisted for weeks, and I later saw a nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. We discussed if it might be Covid-19, but I didn’t have enough other symptoms so she thought not.) Then on March 6, the annual change back to Daylight Saving Time arrived, filling the second half of every day with much more daylight. Soon it became early Spring, with fruit trees in the park breaking out in blossoms, and now on April 25, it’s mid-Spring. Each day, even when it’s cloudy, runs for more hours full of daylight, stretching longer into the evening before dark finally falls.

Most years I greatly appreciate the longer days of sunlight, but now with the quarantining, necessary though it is, I feel oppressed by the long days. Now, time lays heavy on my hands. This is especially true because, as alluded to above, it’s a personal routine established over many years for me—after a work day editing and doing my job as a literary agent— to be out late in the day taking rides on my bike riding along the Hudson River on the Cherry Walk in the hours approaching sunset, taking pictures with my iPhone, soaking in the last rays of the day.

And yet, the last time I was out on my bike? Early February, around the time I took in too much cold air on a ride. Of course it’s warmer now, but I don’t fancy riding with a mask on, nor do I even relish being out under the circumstances. And I would invariably jostle the mask with my helmet, and my glasses would fog, especially inconvenient as bright daylight often makes it necessary to wear my sunglasses. These past weeks I have been out for some walks down to the river, but my range doesn’t stretch nearly as far as I can ramble on my bike. And, I do want to observe Gov Cuomo’s default recommendation to stay home as much as possible.

To round out this personal post, I’ll share two photos I took in late 2019, during bike rides, before the crisis, and a picture I took last week, while on a walk along the Hudson River.

Sold: “Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Life” by Todd Goddard

I’m very excited to announce that under the banner of my literary agency Philip Turner Book Productions I’ve sold Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Life to Blackstone Publishing in print, ebook, and audiobook, on behalf of my author client Todd Goddard, associate professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University.  This will be the first biography to chronicle the fascinating, large life of the acclaimed poet and fiction writer (1937-2016). Goddard will examine all aspects of Harrison’s creative life, and how he incorporated major life milestones in to his work. Among those momentous events:

  •  The fatal car wreck that killed Jim’s father and sister when he was twenty-four; he blamed himself as they were heading to a weekend stay at a family cabin for which Jim had intended to join them until his last-minute cancellation delayed their departure. The tragedy spiraled Jim in to a deep depression, while also spurring his dedication to writing, as he soon after published his earliest poems and met Denise Levertov who shepherded his first book to publication, a poetry collection from Norton.
  • Jim received an introduction to Jack Nicholson who became a patron, supporting him financially through the completion of the three novellas that would become the collection,  Legends of the Fall; this relationship led to work on film projects and relief from the money woes that had long burdened him. Through this he also formed associations with many Hollywood figures including Anjelica Huston, John Huston, John Belushi, director Bob Rafelson and his wife Toby, who had made the match with Nicholson, and Stanley Kubrick, with whom Jim played chess.
  • Working with publisher Seymour Lawrence, who embraced the idea of publishing a collection of novellas, an unorthodox experiment that other publishers of the day were not eager to take on. Interviews by the biographer with Harrison’s longtime agent Bob Datilla explore the relationship between the writer and publisher.

Harrison’s sense of place will also be key to the narrative, as Goddard explores the importance of landscape in Jim’s poetry and fiction, mapping his life and situating him topographically. This process will unfold throughout the book in a number of important locales, from the lakes and forests of Michigan, to the crashing surf of the Florida Keys, to Greenwich Village where he drank with Jack Kerouac at the Five Spot bar, to hardscrabble Durango, Mexico, as well as Montana, Hollywood, Arizona, and Provence, France.

Todd Goddard regularly teaches Harrison’s fiction and poetry, and has presented research on Harrison’s works for the Jim Harrison Society at the American Literature Association’s annual conference. His research is well underway, already taking him in to the Harrison archive courtesy of the late author’s estate, thanks to an introduction by generous executives at Grove Atlantic. The archive includes correspondence with Raymond Carver, Francis Ford Coppola, Annie Dillard, Louise Erdrich, Allen Ginsberg, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Norman Mailer, Gary Snyder, David Foster Wallace, Terry Tempest Williams, and Tom McGuane.

Goddard is also in touch with the The Jim Harrison Author Page on Facebook, where more than 10,000 fans celebrate the writer’s life, from preparing a special cassoulet to arranging bookstore discussions of Harrison’s work.

In Harrison’s later years, he was twice a featured guest on Anthony Bourdain’s TV shows, gaining a status as an elder statesman of American letters and enlightened living. With such biographies as Madison Smartt Bell’s work on Robert Stone (Doubleday, published this month), it’s a propitious time for this biography of Jim Harrison.

 

Sold: “WAR DIARIST: The Many Battles of Richard Tregaskis” by Ray E. Boomhower

January 2021 update: The book on Richard Tregaskis will be published in Fall 2021. The author and University of New Mexico Press have settled on a final title: Richard Tregaskis: Reporting under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam.

Delighted that I’ve sold Ray E. Boomhower’s WAR DIARIST: The Many Battles of Richard Tregaskis by independent scholar Ray E. Boomhower to University of New Mexico Press (UNMP) for publication in fall 2021. In 1943, combat reporter Tregaskis published GUADALCANAL DIARY, acquired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, which became an instant bestseller and the first book to emerge from the Pacific theater, when Americans had had little chance to read about the fighting there. Here are some grafs from the pitch letter I sent to the editor at UNMP, and photos that will be in the book, including one of the lanky reporter.

In 1942-43, Tregaskis (1916-73) was one of just two reporters “embedded” with US forces in the Pacific, before the specialized use of that term existed. He observed the fierce fighting between the Americans and Japanese, sending daily dispatches that had to be cleared by military censors before they could go to his editors at the International News Service. Some things he did not share with any editors or readers, as Boomhower writes:

“During his time on Guadalcanal, Tregaskis and United Press International reporter Bob Miller armed themselves with Colt 1911A1 pistols in direct contravention of U.S. War Department regulations prohibiting correspondents from using weapons. “We knew and the Marines knew that if we ran up against Jap[anese] snipers, they weren’t going to ask for our credentials.” Upon leaving Guadalcanal on a B-17 bomber, Tregaskis also helped man one of the plane’s .50-caliber machine guns and fired on an attacking Japanese Zero fighter.”

While breaking the mold for a war reporter, Boomhower notes that Tregaskis also harbored a distressing medical secret:

“Neither his colleagues in the field or his superiors at the International News Service knew that when he began his work in the Pacific Tregaskis had to contend with a recently diagnosed condition—diabetes, a debilitating disease that plagued his family.”

At one point, while briefly laid over in Pearl Harbor, he sent an expanded collection of his combat dispatches to a wire service editor who shopped the manuscript to more than a half dozen book publishers in NY. Bennett Cerf read it overnight and acquired the rights the next day. This became Guadalcanal Diary, an early example of “an instant book”; it was an immediate bestseller for Random House, and before WWII had ended, a Hollywood movie with Anthony Quinn, William Bendix, and Richard Conte.

At another point during Tregaskis’s reporting career, while covering combat action in Italy, the 6-foot, 5-inch tall reporter was struck by an artillery shell that punctured his helmet and nearly killed him. Following brain surgery—when a metal plate was inserted into his skull—and a difficult five-month recuperation back in the States, he learned to speak again by reciting poetry, and in June 1944 resumed work, reporting from the Normandy beachhead established on D-Day.

Boomhower’s book will chronicle Tregaskis’s whole story from before the war, and beyond. He was a Harvard grad, Class of ’38, whose classmates included Kermit Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, Jr., and the historian Theodore White. Tregaskis knew Ernie Pyle and the photographer Robert Capa.

I’ve found Boomhower’s writing in the sample chapters as alive and vivid about reporting under extreme and dangerous challenges as Tregaskis’s own indelible war reporting. By the late 1960s, more than three million copies of Guadalcanal Diary had been sold and it had been translated into twelve languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Danish. The book is in print as a Modern Library edition with an Introduction by Mark Bowden, while many of Tregaskis’s wartime dispatches are included in volume 1 of the Library of America’s book Reporting World War IIRay E. Boomhower is senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press. He is the author of more than ten books including Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Democratic Primary (2008, Indiana University Press), which won the Indiana Center for the Book’s 2009 award in nonfiction.

Sold: Audio book rights for “Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop” by Nate Patrin

Excited to announce that I’ve sold audio rights to editor Madeleine Collins at Tantor Media for BRING THAT BEAT BACK: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop by my agency client, and contributor to Stereogum, Nate Patrin. The book is a close analysis of four creators—pioneering DJ Grandmaster Flash; sampling innovator Prince Paul; superstar mogul Dr. Dre and left-field curator Madlib—who’ve helped shape the sounds of what’s become one of the world’s most popular art forms, one beat at a time. I earlier sold print rights to Erik Anderson, editor at University of Minnesota Press, who will publish their edition in April 2020. #books #hiphop #sampling #audiobooks #publishing #criticism

Another Good “Ride” with Marc Berger & Band

Marc Berger, 11th St BarMore than six years ago, at a now-shuttered music venue called The Living Room on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, I was lucky to hear singer/songwriter Marc Berger for the first time, a live show that I wrote about then for this blog. I made friends with Marc and have stayed on his email list so earlier this week was delighted to see that he’d be playing at another LES venue, 11th St Bar, with no cover charge on Thursday night. I made a point of turning up.

Marc always assembles a good band. On acoustic guitar and vocals, he was flanked by four good players, mandolin, electric bass, drums, and electric guitar—the bass and mandolin players had been on hand earlier occasions. They played two full sets in the intimate room—a donation bucket was passed around twice among the appreciative audience—and a piano player came on for the late set when Marc switched from acoustic guitar to an electric of his own.

I believe the songs were all his compositions, several coming from his 2013 album “Ride,” along with some newer numbers. If you enjoy acoustic and roots music drenched in the American West, and artists like Ian Tyson and Tom Russell, you ought to listen to Berger and his richly themed album. On Berger’s website, he writes about the setting that inspired the music: “Clouds that forever stampede the endless sky, shadows gliding over canyon walls–the West is a vast expanse of magic and mystery. American artists from John Ford to Frederick Remington to A.B. Guthrie have used film, canvas and the printed page to convey the essence of its unique landscape and mythology.” To those visual associations, I’ll add the 1962 black & white Kirk Douglas film, ‘Lonely Are the Brave,‘ where he plays a latter day cowboy unable to conform to modern society. The movie was based on a novel, Brave Cowboy,  by legendary iconoclast of the American West Edward Abbey. Relatedly, Kirk Douglas also played the lead role in the 1952 adaptation of the aforementioned Guthrie’s modern classic about the frontier west, The Big Sky.

Here’s an old video of Berger and band playing his song “The Devil Came Down from Idaho” at the much-missed Living Room. Jeff Eyrich, here on acoustic bass, also played at the 11th St Bar gig, with nice chunky bass parts. Berger definitely keeps good musicians around him. Rob Meador, the mandolin player, is a rhythmic rock. And Berger’s a good performer, with lots of energy and easy banter between songs.

Marc Berger and band

Among the sideplayers at 11th St Bar was a well known music producer, Steve Addabbo, who played tasty lead guitar throughout the evening. That’s him in my photos with the halo of white hair. During the break between sets I saw him talking with another member of the audience, a woman who had a friendly dog with her. We began conversing and when Steve went back to play the next set, I properly met the sweet coffee-colored Labradoodle, Bertie, and his audience member owner. Turns out she is a gifted musician herself, the singer/songwriter Diana Jones, whose catalog I’m now exploring. That’s New York for you—you really never know who you might meet when you walk out your door. Her songs are Appalachian-infused ballads with a strong social conscience. She told me of a song of hers performed by Ana Egge and Iris Dement, “Ballad of a Poor Child.” Here’s a video of Jones singing her poignant song, “Pony.”

It was a treat hearing Marc Berger’s songs inspired by the American West and his lifetime of experiences on our vast continent, and meeting Diana Jones and discovering her soulful music. 11th St Bar is a comfortable venue that I hope to return to soon. They have a traditional Irish music session on Sunday nights that runs from 10pm-2pm, which must be lots of fun.

Excited for Publication Day of “The Twenty-Ninth Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack on the Canadian Tundra”

I’m thrilled that Alex Messenger’s book The Twenty-Ninth Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra will officially be published tomorrow, November 12 by Blackstone Publishing, in hardcover, ebook, and in an audiobook edition read by the author. I’ve been working with Alex since 2016, so it’s very heartening to know that his book is about to reach the reading public.

As editor and publisher in 2002 of the superb historical novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke, later adapted for a Hollywood movie, it’s a happy coincidence for me to be involved with another book featuring the survivor of a near-lethal encounter with a grizzly bear. If you’ve enjoyed such books as Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (where by contrast the young protagonist did not survive his wilderness ordeal), Admiral Richard Byrd’s Alone, and Great Heart: The History of a Labrador Adventure by James West Davidson and John Rugge, you’ll definitely enjoy Alex’s first-person chronicle.

The Twenty-Ninth Day is also a featured pick of the Midwest Booksellers Association.

For updates on Alex’s book tour, you can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @AMessengerPhoto and at The Twenty-Ninth Day website.

If you’re in Minnesota, there’s a full line-up of author events coming up:

11/12/19, 6pm, Bookstore at Fitger’s, Duluth.MN

11/23/19 Author signing at Midwest Mountaineering Outdoor Adventure Expo, Minneapolis, MN

11/23 6pm Excelsior Bay Books, Excelsior, MN

11/30/19 Author signing at Frost River, Duluth, for Small Business Saturday

12/7/19 Scout & Morgan Books, Cambridge, MN

12/8/19 Holiday Signing at Next Chapter Bookstore 11-1pm, St Paul, MN

12/14/19 Zenith Bookstore, Duluth, MN, with two other authors

Also, here are some excellent publicity hits and below them the video trailer Blackstone Publishing did to promote the book.

Duluth News Tribune, feature article 

Minnesota Public Radio, interview with the author