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Always Happy to See Novelist Walter Tevis Remembered and Appreciated

Thursday January 28, 2016 Update: Though saddened by the recent death of David Bowie, I was buoyed to to learn that “Lazarus,” Bowie’s musical, is described as a sequel to the 1976 movie “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” which itself was based on Walter Tevis’s 1963 novel of the same name. Although Tevis died in 1988, I’m glad to know that his longtime agent, Susan Schulman, is still finding ways to license and repurpose his work, and in this instance to keep alive Tevis’s interplanetary visitor, Thomas Jerome Newton.

Monday February 10 Update: In a pleasant coincidence, this morning’s email brings more affirmation of the talents of the late Walter Tevis, whose novels I praised in yesterday in the post below. It was announced in the daily deal memo of Publishermarketplace.com that another his novels has been optioned for film:

Walter Tevis’s MOCKINGBIRD, to Robert Schwartz at Seismic Pictures, by Susan Schulman at Susan Schulman Literary Agency.*

Walter Tevis, gone 26 years and still having his books optioned. Pretty amazing, huh? Here’s a shot of an old galley I have of the novel. Mockingbird
Sunday, February 9
Good essay by Malcolm Jones in the Daily Beast on how Walter Tevis’s novel The Man Who Fell to Earth, published in 1963, differs from the 1976 film version directed by Nicholas Roeg, starring David Bowie. I still love all Walter Tevis’s books, especially his chess novel, Queen’s Gambit. I met him when he was touring for that book in 1983. He came to visit Undercover Books despite a blizzard in Cleveland that day, because his editor at Random House had urged him to come see our bookstore. Though he had limited time between flights, he was genial and met several of our customers while signing copies of the new novel.

Tevis, who died in 1988, is way under-appreciated. He never wrote a mediocre book. His others include his pool novels The Hustler and The Color of Money (also both adapted for memorable films) and his other science fiction novel, The Steps of the Sun, which I brought out in paperback in 1988 when I was an editor at Collier Macmillan. Tevis’s characters were often in the midst of existential crises, certainly true for Bowie’s alien character in “The Man Who Fell to Earth”; Beth, the struggling teenaged chess prodigy in Queen’s Gambit; and Eddie Felson, the hard-drinking pool-player in “The Hustler,” played by Paul Newman opposite Jackie Gleason. For years there have been rumors of someone making a film of Queen’s Gambit but no one’s done it yet. Guess it’s in the same category as Jack Finney’s Time & Again, also much loved as a novel, and much discussed as a film, but not made, at least not yet.

Steps of the SunSteps of the Sun back cover
* Coincidentally, some years after I published Steps of the Sun, Tevis’s agent Susan Schulman introduced me to Eleanora Tevis, the late author’s widow, a Scotswoman. She in turn introduced me to friends of hers in Scotland, who then became good friends to me and my whole family, lodging us numerous times at their comfortable home in Glasgow. This was the Metzstein family, whose patriarch Isi was a notable architect, whom I eulogized after his death in 2012.

A Vanished Young Chess Master

Last winter, publishing reporter Sarah Weinman–who works for PublishersMarketplace.com and who writes for a number of other publications–asked me if I would try to help her with a story she was working on. Having learned that I attended Franconia College in the 70s, Sarah wondered if I had ever known fellow FC student, Peter Winston. he began in ’75, I began in ’73. His name didn’t ring a bell for me, but Sarah continued and told me about more him, ultimately asking if I would put the word out among the old College community for anyone who might’ve known him. I agreed readily. Sadly, there was a dark and tragic background to her queries, and to the story. She explained that Winston, for a time a promising talent in competitive chess, burdened with a history of mental health problems, had in 1978 simply vanished, never to have been seen since. Foul play or misadventure were of course suspected by his family and authorities, but no trace or record of him has ever been found. He was a kind of modern-day Judge Crater.

I put the word out on the Franconia College Facebook page, a 366-member strong group of former students, faculty and extended community members. Unfortunately, my request for information yielded not a single lead, which I told Sarah last March. She thanked me for trying to help, and went back to reporting the story through other means, and I made a mental note to watch her byline for the piece on Peter Winston. Yesterday, the result of her efforts appeared in the New York Observer, a fascinating 3,000 word article that was the last thing I read before falling asleep last night. Sarah also’s blogged about the writing of the piece on her excellent tumblr, Off On a Tangent. The Observer article is haunting and sad–kind of a nonfiction counterpart to Queen’s Gambit, the novel by Walter Tevis*, whose protagonist is a troubled female chess prodigy. Though Sarah’s piece can answer few questions about Winston’s disappearance, it asks many and is compelling reading, folding in a portrait of the chess scene in NY in the 70s, the milieu that produced Winston, and a character sketch of him. Publication of the piece may also produce some leads for Sarah, so I’m recommending that you read her story and share it widely among your contacts. Any Franconia College people who may not have seen my earlier call for information, please take note. If you knew Peter, or remember him, please let me know and I will put you in touch with Sarah.

I must say now as I keep looking at this photo, I believe I must have seen him at the College, his face and demeanor are somehow familiar, but I know I never spoke with him.

* Tevis clearly had a gift for writing about troubled, alienated protagonists, sometimes young. In addition to the chess novel, his last book, he also wrote the SF novels, The Man Who Fell to Earth (a classic film with David Bowie) and The Steps of the Sun (which I happened to publish in 1989), and the pool hall novels The Hustler and The Color of Money, also great movies with Paul Newman in both, and Jackie Gleason in the first. In 1983, when Tevis was on tour for Queen’s Gambit he happened to stop in my Cleveland bookstore, Undercover Books and my brother and sister and I talked with him for an hour, on a blizzardy day. He died just a year later, in 1984. The Peter Winston mystery is one to which he would have definitely related–had it been reported in local news outlets, but according to Sarah Weinman, Winston’s disappearance barely registered in local media, or even with NYPD, who she writes have “no record of anyone by his name disappearing from the city.” Records for her piece were very sparse, with open requests to police and city authorities officially unanswered at this point.

Farewell to Scottish Friend, Architect Isi Metzstein

I was saddened recently to learn that Isi Metzstein, a longtime friend and the father in a family I’ve been close with for many years, died at his home in Glasgow, Scotland on January 10. Isi lived a remarkable life and was a well-regarded architect and teacher, as the obituaries that have run all over Britain attest, including prominent notices in the Independent (“Architect Hailed for Modernist Vision and Inspirational Teaching”) and the Guardian(“Innovative Architect Designed Remarkable Postwar Buildings”). //more . . .