I Savored “The Ecliptic,” Benjamin Wood’s Novel about Artists and the Creative Process

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I really enjoyed reading The Ecliptic, a novel recently published in Britain by English author Benjamin Wood. It's narrated by a female painter named Knell, set in part in London in the early 1960s. The story opens at a mysterious refuge for artists where Knell and other creative people (a playwright, an architect, a composer) have found safe harbor. Ensconced in the protective cocoon of this colony, to which benefactors have sent them so they could work only on their artistic pursuits, they think are far away from all worldy concerns, until a new artist turns up in their midst, a troubled young man. Wood is a maker of great sentences—the kind your mind likes to chew on and re-read, making leisurely progress through the book a delicious process—and his story is an engrossing one with characters you come to really care about. The Ecliptic is the second novel by Benjamin Wood, whose first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, I am eager to read next. Here's a picture of well-thumbed the galley I read, with my business card out the top, which I used as a bookmark over the couple of weeks I savored this novel of ideas that explores the creative process in entertaining and thoughtful ways. The book will be published in the States in May 2016. I highly recommend you watch for this one.

 

 

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With Rizzoli Bookstore Open, Wishing them Well, Stepping Back for Now

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As I reported on this blog last month, I was excited to begin working with Rizzoli to help them open their new flagship bookstore on Broadway near 26th St in Manhattan. It was gratifying to see the enthusiastic response of many friends and readers here who cheered my return to bookselling, more than 30 years after I got my start in the book business with Undercover Books in Cleveland. After working for Rizzoli pretty much all of July—including a stretch when I worked 19 out of 22 days, determined physical effort as part of a hard-working crew to which I was proud to contribute my efforts—we were excited to open the store to customers on July 27. However, due to the ongoing build-out of the 5,000 square foot space, with two large rooms then incomplete, and construction continuing for more weeks, I’ve decided to step back from working in the store for now. In the days I worked there after it opened to customers, the foot traffic was brisk, and I’m optimistic that the bookstore is going to do very well, indeed. I’m glad I was able to contribute to Rizzoli’s reopening in New York City, and am grateful to store manager Chad Bunning who gave me the opportunity, and with whom I share a devotion to energetic bookselling. I urge you to visit Rizzoli’s handsome new store, and if you first want to see a bit of what it looks like, below is a picture I took at a reception held in July for media and publishing professionals, and at this link there are others. For my part, I am excited to return full-time to my independent editorial and publishing consultancy, Philip Turner Book Productions, with some assignments from new clients already lined up for the fall.

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RIP Tyler Drumheller, CIA Operative & Iraq War Truthteller

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With President Obama rightly sounding a cautionary tone during his speech yesterday promoting the Iran nuclear deal—by citing the many examples of flawed judgment shown during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq—I note with rue and sadness the death this week of Tyler Drumheller, longtime CIA operative and an Iraq War truthteller whose book, On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence written with Elaine Monahan, I edited and published with him (Philip Turner Books, Carroll & Graf, 2006). Tyler wrote about how he and other US intelligence officials had spotted early on that the Iraqi source Curveball was a serial fabricator whose claims about mobile biological weapons labs should not be believed. Yet Curveball’s claims remained in the inventory of malarkey from unreliable Iraqis that Bush administration officials exploited, with his bogus info being inserted into Colin Powell’s disastrous speech at the UN. As Greg Miller’s excellent Washington Post obit on Drumheller reports, Tyler was flabbergasted when he heard Powell’s speech, and bravely tangled in print and on “60 Minutes” with the CIA Director George Tenet about Curveball. It was a distinct pleasure for Tyler when I suggested to him that we use the agency photo of the two of them for the back cover photo that you see below.

I worked on Tyler’s book amid an amazing, energized period of six years during which I also acquired, edited, and published Susan McDougal’s The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk: Why I Wouldn’t Testify Against the Clintons and What I Learned in Jail (Carroll & Graf, 2001), which sort of stamped ‘paid-back’ to the Whitewater years, and Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s blockbuster book The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity, (Carroll & Graf, 2004) a story that was in the news for months, bridging Bush’s first and second terms. Following Tyler’s book—a true insider’s account that showed definitively how determined the Bushies had been to find and cultivate intelligence that would give them a pretext for invading Iraq—with journalist Murray Waas I brought out The United States v. I. Lewis Libby (Union Square Press, 2007), a compendium of public documents that featured the transcript from the trial that saw Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff to VP Cheney, prosecuted for obstructing justice in the circumstances surrounding the release of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA status. I’ve written more here about these books and the years when rogue prosecutors, the Bush administration, and determined adversaries were targeting authors with whom I worked.

I’m thinking of Tyler today, who less than ten years ago was devoting his reluctant retirement from the CIA to exposing how the agency had been used and abused by Bush administration officials to justify the tragic invasion of Iraq. I’m so relieved that a decade later President Obama is in charge of our foreign policy, determined to use diplomacy to make peace with adversaries.

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