According to this National Post column by Robert Fulford that I tweeted about earlier, Random House is reissuing all 21 of John MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels, and some of his books that were not in the McGee series. I hope they include in the latter group, The Executioners, the book that was adapted for the movie “Cape Fear,” in the first instance starring Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and Polly Bergen (1962) and later, Robert De Niro, Nick Nolte, and Jessica Lange (1991). The McGee titles were all color-coded, so readers could remember which ones they’d read, and which they’d missed. I am glad to see they’re coming back, as paperbacks and ebooks. I love these books and have blogged about them frequently in the past couple years. I had first found this John D. MacDonald fan page on Facebook, where I discovered the Fulford column posted by a fellow fan. At Undercover Books, where I worked from 1978-85, we stocked and sold and reordered all these titles. Most of the books in the gallery below were in the library of my late brother, Joel Turner, which I brought in to my own library after his death in 2009.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.png00Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-05-06 16:39:032014-10-08 20:20:38The Colors in a Writer’s Mind–John D. MacDonald & Travis McGee
May 4, 2018—On this date forty years ago, I opened Undercover Books in Cleveland with my sister Pamela, brother Joel, and our parents Earl and Sylvia. Below is one of my favorite posts I’ve ever written and shared from this blog about this date in my life.
—–
I published a version of this post on May 4, 2012, and have now updated it for 2013-14 with additional material, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio,” as you’ll see below. The comments below are from the 2012-13 posting–you’re welcome to add your own.
— May 4, a big date on my personal calendar
On this date in 1970 I was fifteen. That afternoon, around 4:30, I was standing on a sidewalk in downtown Cleveland, waiting for my sister Pamela to get off her job at Halle Bros., a local department store. Nearby, a delivery van pulled up, with the name of the evening paper, Cleveland Press, emblazoned across its side. The back door of the van rolled up and a worker began tossing bundles of that afternoon’s edition off the truck. It was a real “Front Page” moment, as in old movies when a swirl of numbered calendar pages and newspaper print resolves in to a splashy headline of bold, readable type and a brash reporter rushes off to get the rest of the story. Only this time, it was not a funny, Capraesque moment. In weirdly unfolding slow-motion I watched a particular bundle roll toward me until it landed above the fold, headline up. Like seeing a license plate in front of one’s eyes during a car accident—and remembering the combo of digits and letters forever—I read the inches-high black type: Four Students Shot Dead On Kent Campus. For several days prior, I had been following the antiwar demonstrations at Kent State, about thirty miles from Cleveland, and I knew that Ohio Governor James Rhodes had deployed armed troops to the campus. Pam soon joined me on the sidewalk and I told her the disturbing news. We shared our shock and dismay and probably dropped whatever we had been planning to do, though I have no memory after telling her about the newspaper headline. I recall that little more than a week later I heard on local radio Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s recording of “Ohio.” It was as if Neil had written a musical version of an instant book, as is still done in the book world after a terrible catastrophe. In fact, in Neil’s recent memoir Heavy Peace he recalls quickly writing the song and the alacrity with which they recorded it, pushing the acetate copies of the song out to radio stations, before the vinyl 45s had even been pressed. Here’s a youtube version of the song from the Neil Young online archive. Thanks to Neil for making this sharable, as other versions of the song are not.
Eight years later, May 4, 1978
Pamela, our brother Joel, our parents Earl and Sylvia, and I all opened Undercover Books, the bookstore that would define our lives for many years. When I was graduated from Franconia College a year earlier, with a BA in Philosophy of Education and History of Religion, I had imagined I might work for the Anti-Defamation League or some similar organization. I certainly hadn’t thought of working in a bookstore, but my siblings—with Pam having worked in department stores, and Joel at Kay’s Bookstore in downtown Cleveland–had the idea of opening a bookstore in our home suburb of Shaker Heights, where despite it being an affluent and well-educated community, no bookstore had ever been located. We were fortunate in our timing, for in Cleveland, as in several other midwestern cities, book retailing was migrating from the downtown core to the suburbs. Undercover Books caught on right away, and I got what amounted to a graduate education, provided by bookselling. As buyer for adult books for what would become our three-store indie chain, I met every day with bookbuying customers and browsers. We were regularly called upon by publishers’ sales reps, and became a go-to store for houses eager to break out books on the national scene. Notable authors who launched books at the store included Mark Helprin (Winter’s Tale), Richard North Patterson (The Lasko Tangent), and Walter Tevis (Queen’s Gambit). I was with the bookstores for seven years before moving to New York City, and have written more about the transition here on this site. The bookstore proved to be a gateway to my career in the book business and it all began on this date thirty-six years ago today.
Another nine years, May 4, 1987
Now working as an editor at Walker & Company, my first full-time position with a publishing house, I was in the happy position of telling my author Ellen Hunnicutt that her novel, Suite For Calliope: A Music and the Circus—the first book I signed up on arriving at the company, and which was to be published that summer—had just received a starred review in Kirkus. Ellen was very excited as I read her the whole review with lines like these, “An extraordinary first novel that, in its remarkable inventiveness, intelligence, and charm-struck humanity, should draw—and more than richly reward—readers of almost every inclination. . . . A prodigiously masterful novel of profundity, breadth, and continual delight: waiting now only for what ought to be its very, very many readers.” Note I read it to her, and didn’t fax it, probably because neither one of us had one. What added to the special quality of the occasion however was that this day, May 4, was also Ellen’s birthday. You can read more about how I came to discover Suite for Calliope in this essay elsewhere on this blog.
Nowadays, when May 4 rolls around again, even if nothing so deeply tragic or personally historic is occurring in that given year, I marvel at it all. For now, I’m just really glad I created this site over the past couple years, so that this year, I have a proper venue to share my memories of May 4, from 44 years ago, from 36 years ago, and from 27 years ago.
The pictures seen here were taken in what we called “the middle room” at Undercover Books, where we placed a comfortable rattan couch. The black Labrador is our dog Noah, whose ear Joel is massaging. I am wearing the same style of pink eyeglass frames as I wear nowadays. I’ve told the story of how Joel and I came to get Noah at a dog pound in Deadwood, South Dakota, on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 1970, on a biographical blog post I tweeted out it a few months ago, with a picture of Noah and me that I cherish. I miss them both, Noah who passed in 1982, and Joel in 2009.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-04-at-11.50.14-AM.png1003786Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-05-03 23:58:152021-05-04 20:38:32May 4th, a Key Date in My Life at 3 Critical Junctures
#FridayReads, May 3–Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked, novelist James Lasdun’s nightmarish memoir is a literary yet realistic account of how he came to be cyber-stalked by a former student. No matter what Lasdun has done over the past several years, from contacting police to ignoring the woman he calls Nasreen, she has continued to make him the target of her ceaseless anti-Jewish hatred and twisted paranoia, emailing venomous messages to him with numbing frequency, posting vicious rumors about him, impersonating him to his contacts and in online forums, implicating his literary agent and colleagues. Despite these invasions of his personal space, Lasdun has prevailed, in his own way. The book is rich with allusions to such literary sources as Gawain and the Green Knight, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel, The Penitent, and Lasdun’s own novel, The Horned Man. A disturbing yet compelling chronicle. I want to read more of Lasdun’s work, because whatever one may say about this horrible experience with Nasreen, he’s also a terrific writer whose sentence-making is continually engrossing.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.png00Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-05-03 20:50:542014-06-11 10:41:12#FridayReads, May 3–James Lasdun’s “Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked”
I love Scotland and have visited near the region where this novel takes place, so I found it enjoyable. However, it should have had a better line edit and copyedit. There were plot threads hinted at that weren’t resolved and characters who ought to have had more development. Annoyingly, there were a lot of typos and proofing errors in this title, published by Atria, at Simon & Schuster. C’mon publishing colleagues, you can do better than this!
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.png00Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-04-27 20:59:272013-04-27 22:46:51#FridayReads, April 26, “A Double Death on the Black Isle” by A.D. Scott
Gilbert King, whom I happen to know as a publishing acquaintance, got some welcome and unexpected news last week. His book, Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in the general nonfiction category. King didn’t know that his publisher HarperCollins had submitted his book for consideration of the prize. A NY Times story published tonight profiles the unpretentious King, who was on a golf course in Florida when he got the news from a friend’s text: “Dude. Pulitzer.”
With refreshing modesty, King, whose book was published in March 2012, told the Times reporter William Grimes, “‘I’m sure people who write the big, critically acclaimed books know if they’re in the running. . . . But I’d just gotten a notice from my publisher that the book had been remaindered.’” The book tells a story of a too-little known incident of racial injustice, when in 1949 four black men were falsely accused of raping a white woman. The villain of the tale is the local sheriff in Groveland, Florida, Willis McCall, who King told Grimes compares unfavorably even with another notorious lawman: “’He made Bull Connor look like Barney Fife,’ the author said, “referring to the notorious commissioner of public safety in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil rights era. ‘Connor used dogs and fire hoses. McCall actually killed people,’” including one of the accused in this case.
King faced a daunting research challenge. While he did have the FBI case files to draw on, he also really needed to see records of the case housed at the NAACP, as Thurgood Marshall, then with the civil rights organization, had defended the accused. Though the organization had never shared such case files, even with eminent academics–because of attorney-client privilege–King persuaded them in this instance by insisting he was only interested in this one case, and none of their other historic cases. It sounds like a remarkable book, one with a terrible miscarriage of justice at the heart of the story that it seeks to redress, just the sort of book I have always enjoyed acquiring and championing as an editor for publishing houses.
I couldn’t be happier for Gilbert King, whose two books have “enjoyed only modest sales.” Grimes writes that King “is undecided what the next project might be. When the Pulitzer news came, ‘I was sort of lying low.’” I hope his next book, whatever he writes about, and whenever he publishes it, will gain recognition from the start. With the Pulitzer in his back pocket, it’s a good bet it will.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.png00Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-04-24 23:05:042013-04-24 23:05:04Author Gilbert King, a Deserving Pulitzer Prize Winner, Takes it All in Stride
I’ve seen “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” many times, yet couldn’t resist watching it again when TCM aired the 1948 film this past Sunday night. It’s a great movie based on the mysterious B. Traven’s 1935 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Its scenes unfold inexorably like the movements of a symphony. Walter Huston (Howard), Bogart (Fred C. Dobbs) and the too-little seen Tim Holt (Curtin) form the amazing core of a powerful cast. Howard is the moral center of the movie, possessing shaman-like wisdom and healing powers. As played by Huston, he also displays one of the most prodigious laughs I’ve ever seen or heard in the movies. At the film’s climax, as it becomes clear that all their dreams of wealth have gone up in dust, he gives vent to a laugh that seems to mock all human vanity and grandiosity, at which point Curtin also sees the cosmic humor in their dashed dreams, and he joins Howard in laughing at the outcome of their quest for riches. I just love their expressions and so took pictures of my TV at that point, with the rest of those photos, and other relevant images, at the bottom of this post.
Walter’s son John Huston, years later seen on-screen as character Noah Cross in “Chinatown” wrote the screenplay of “Treasure” and directed the film, winning an Oscar for each of those, while Walter won the statue for Best Supporting Actor.
Two more great movies with Walter Huston in leading roles are “American Madness” (1932), directed by Frank Capra, where he plays a Depression-era bank president preventing a run on his bank. The film celebrates the welfare of ‘the little people,’ not dissimilar to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I also love “Gabriel Over the White House” (1933), directed by Gregory LaCava, who also worked with W.C. Fields, where Huston plays the president of the United States. At the outset, his President Hammond is unconcerned about the plight of the masses suffering in the Depression, and (in an evocation of the pleas of the real Bonus Army that FDR faced) he’s planning to crush the protests of the veterans massing outside the White House. However, after sustaining a providential blow to the head in a car accident, he turns over a new leaf and offers succor and hope to the desperate vets. Please click here to see all photos.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/8-Howard-laugh.png318720Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-04-17 14:10:402015-01-25 12:04:49A Favorite Film, “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” With One of the Movies’ Greatest Laughs
#FridayReads, April 12–The Barber’s Conundrum–And Other Stories: Observations from Life in the Cheap Seats by John Hartnett. A while back, the author, whom I know a bit as a publishing industry contact, asked if I’d like to see a copy of his book of humorous essays, which he’d recently published himself. I like the genre of the humor essay, going back to E.B. White, Stephen Leacock, and in our era with writers like Roy Blount, Jr., and Nora Ephron, and so asked him to send me a copy. I had dipped in to the book a bit before this week, but only in the past few days have I made a point of making sure to read all 35 + pieces in the collection, and gain a sense of the whole. Now I realize how much I really like this charming book. The title piece, on the futility of trying to get a decent haircut, is full of wry observations and delicate exaggeration:
“I’m a barber’s worst nightmare because I’m not a crew cut guy. They enjoy giving crew cuts because all they need is a pair of clippers and a little conversation. There’s no finesse in crew cuts, no risks. Whenever I sink into the chair, they automatically reach for the clippers and when I tell them I just want a trim, they start looking at my head like it’ the Manhattan Project. It’s not uncommon to have three barbers looking at my head at the same time, like baseball managers standing around the pitcher’s mound deciding whether to try a little pep talk or send for the reliever. I’ve had barbers spontaneously retire while I sat in their chairs. One even tried to convince me that I’d be better off cutting it myself.”
Equally amusing are such pieces as “The Catalog: A Modern Fairy Tale,” about the insidious temptations of mail order shopping, and “Surviving Your First Trade Show,” on the rituals of being an exhibitor at a convention.
Hartnett’s been a gag writer, so he’s got the knack for inducing a chuckle, and nowadays also writes a humor blog, The Monkey Bellhop. I’ve found this an ideal book for the subway, where I can actually start a piece boarding a train, and finish it before reaching my destination. I recommend it if you’re looking for some painless laughs, something to lighten whatever load of worry might be a part of your day. While self-published, it’s nonetheless attracted 55 customer reviews on Amazon. I know of many commercially published books that don’t manage even half as many comments.
I’ve also read and will be mulling for days, Richard Nash’s deepthink essay on the future and purpose of publishing, “What is the Business of Literature? published in the Virginia Quarterly Review. Nash is with Small Demons, an innovator in mapping and indexing content from books in creative ways. I also recommend this essay highly, which carries the reading line, “As technology disrupts the business model of traditional publishers, the industry must imagine new ways of capturing the value of a book.” I was happy to be reminded of Nash’s piece–which first landed with a flurry a few weeks ago–by publishing thinker Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media, who wrote about it on his blog earlier this week. H/t Brian.
I didn’t plan ahead on sharing this medley of readings–but sort of like cooking a meal with an unlikely set of ingredients and discovering how well they work together–now that I’ve done so I’m intrigued to see there’s a kind of congruity about them. From a self-published book of essays that’s making its way in the emerging publishing ecosphere to an essay considering that ecosphere and even what makes a book, I think the combination suggests something more than just my reading taste. Not sure I can say yet that is, but it’s what I’ll be mulling this weekend.
http://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.png00Philip Turnerhttp://philipsturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/GGB_Logo.pngPhilip Turner2013-04-12 22:10:252013-04-12 23:28:38#FridayReads, April 12–“The Barber’s Conundrum,” Essays by John Hartnett + Richard Nash, On the Business of Literature
I knew Peter Workman, founder of Workman Publishing, who died last Sunday at age 74. I started ordering Workman titles from him and his sales reps in 1978, when I opened a bookstore. The past 5 years Peter and I were fellow members of the same monthly lunch club. He last attended one of our luncheons last November, after which he missed the next month and we learned he’d become ill. He never rejoined us. Peter’s company was one of the most successful independently owned publishers of our time.I’ve been tweeting and sharing about him since Sunday. Here’s a selection of my timeline since then.
