Entries by Philip Turner

Remembering Publishing Pal Peter Warner, RIP

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I am happy I can revisit a blog post I wrote and published almost nine years ago, when publishing friend Peter Warner was launching a book of his own, The Mole—The Cold War Memoir of Winston Bates: A Novel. It was a clever turn on meta spy fiction, and I loved it reading it back then. I share this today, to honor Peter, who died last September, age 79, and for whom there will be a memorial tomorrow which I’m going to attend. Peter was for years the chief in NYC for Thames & Hudson, the publisher of illustrated books, where he was a participant in dozens and dozens of international co-publishing arrangements. The occasion for my post was the novel’s launch party, hosted by Will Balliet, a longtime editorial colleague of mine when we were both at Carroll & Graf, who succeeded Peter at T & H.

Peter and I were members of a monthly lunch club, Book Table, where I always enjoyed conversing with him. His literary skills were prodigious, and extended to this engrossing thriller, a historical narrative that spans the Suez Crisis, the downing of an American U-2 plane, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Watergate, all told in a faux memoir by Canadian protagonist Winston Bates. I loved it, and so did readers like author Stacy Schiff. She blurbed it thus: “Who better to trust for a through-the-looking-glass tour of Cold War Washington than a short, self-doubting Canadian with a photographic memory? A rich, buoyant ruse of a novel.” I am glad I can share word of it again with friends here.

Chuck Verrill, Editor and Agent, RIP

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Went to a memorial today for Chuck Verrill, longtime editor at Viking Press, and later agent for many great books. Held at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, the brief speeches by friends and colleagues were full of sweet memories and humorous stories. Speakers included Stephen King; Scribner’s Nan Graham; Verrill’s fellow agent Liz Darhansoff, who made Chuck her agency partner in 1991; Abigail Thomas, a longtime Viking editor, and memoirist; and a number of family members. Verrill worked with King on his books for more than forty years, first as his editor and then as his agent.

I didn’t know Verrill well, but we did have lunch a couple times over the years, and I remember he enjoyed hearing about how in 1979 King was on tour for his early novel The Dead Zone and he visited Undercover Books, my family’s bookstore in Cleveland. King was escorted by a Viking sale rep named Dennis Ciccone, and the subject came up of other Viking novelists being published by the Press at that time. I mentioned that I had enjoyed Ernest Hebert’s The Dogs of March, set in New Hampshire, and Howard Frank Mosher’s Disappearances, set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. King, a Maine native, beamed hearing me extol his fellow New England writers, and agreed that both of those novels were exceptional.

At the memorial on Saturday, I learned that Chuck Verrill had for a time been an editorial assistant to the estimable Viking editor Alan Williams, who was himself editor for work by Mosher. #publishing #friendship

Remembering David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” an Every(Wronged)Man Hero

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My favorite male TV star from childhood was David Janssen in “The Fugitive,” playing the wrongly convicted Dr. Richard Kimball. The sympathetic protagonist endures the loss of his murdered wife, then gets collared and condemned for the killing until a train wreck en route to the “death house*” frees him from the clutches of the implacable Lt. Inspector Philip Gerard. Played by the sober Canadian actor Barry Morse, Gerard, like Javert in Les Miserables, tracks the escaped man from one end of the land to the next. Floating from town-to-town, job-to-job, Kimball relies on the anonymity a loner could still have in the 1960s—no one ever asks him for so much as a Social Security number. I don’t think the program could be made today. The show was inspired, in part, by the real-life murder of Marilyn Sheppard in Cleveland, with her doctor husband Sam the accused, which I also paid attention to in the mid-60s. As the fugitive who could never set down roots anywhere, in each teleplay forced to abandon newly forged friendships, Janssen’s Kimball somehow maintained a grim good humor, which I’ve always admired. The show still looks good nowadays.

I have no doubt that my enjoyment of “The Fugitive” is part of the reason why I have always been drawn to publishing books about the unjustly accused, such as Dead Run: The Shocking Story of Dennis Stockton and Life on Death Row in America. by William F. Burke and Joe Jackson, Introduction by William Styron. One of the first posts I published on the blog was the story of how I came to work with Styron in championing Dead Run.

#TVShows #1960s #exonerations
*The pulse-pounding Intro, with its line about “the death house” was voiced by the baritone actor William Conrad.

Manhattan’s Metro Theater, Reopening at Last

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In 2012, I was excited I could report this on my blog, some good news for denizens of my Manhattan neighborhood, and other New Yorkers.

https://philipsturner.com/2012/07/15/alamo-drafthouse-cinema-coming-nyc/

Following Sept 11, 2001, which hit NY’s infrastructure and economy so hard, and Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which added to the damage, it would have been a real shot in the arm for the city to have the renovated movie theater open just four blocks from my apartment, but alas, in 2015, this was the outcome to Alamo’s interest.

https://philipsturner.com/2013/12/08/alamo-drafthouse-cinema-abandons-renovation-metro-theater-nyc/

Last week with my wife—artist Kyle Gallup, who made a collage of the Metro marquee seen below—we were walking up Broadway at 98th Street in front of the old Metro, where we were surprised to see the building’s omnipresent steel doors had been raised and people were working inside. Kyle took a picture:

Now this week comes the welcome news, first in via Westside Rag, and then today in Gothamist that the Metro will finally be reopening. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine told Gothamist reporter Ben Yakas that though he himself had been skeptical himself—due to the past abandonment by Alamo—he’d spoken to the CEO of the as-yet unnamed exhibitor, who told him that the company has actually signed a lease. Renovations will begin soon to turn it into a cinema complex with multiple screens and an event space, to reopen in 2023.

Pre-ordering “The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic”

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For friends of this site who’ve been reading about and are intrigued by the novel coming in May 2022 from Arcade Publishing, The Barrens: A Novel of Love and Death in the Canadian Arctic, by the father-daughter duo from Minnesota Kurt Johnson and Ellie Johnson, you can now pre-order it on the publisher’s website. This link is to a buy button for a number of different booksellers.

The novel is picking up a number of enthusiastic endorsements from readers and writers.

“Terrific novel about canoe trip taken by two women in subarctic Canada. An adventure book, a relationship book, a celebration of the outdoors and the challenges one faces in an at times dangerous environment. It reminded me a bit of Peter Heller’s The River.” Andy Weiner, a publishers’ sale representative

“The Barrens grabbed me from the opening pages and never let go, a riveting adventure story written by a father-daughter team who clearly have wilderness chops.”—Michael Punke, author of The Revenant and Ridgeline

I’ve rarely come across a novel that’s simultaneously so economical and fulsome, that’s as restrained as it is brimming with unspoken wisdom, and that manages all this while also being propulsive in its storytelling. It’s bravura work that demands a wide audience.”—Peter Geye, author of Wintering and Safe from the Sea

“A deeply compelling tale, told in vivid, elegant but concise prose, The Barrens carried me along, swiftly as the river at the heart of the story. The central character, Lee, will break your heart, although she’ll have none of it. Love, loss, life and death, against a landscape as raw and ancient as the human heart. Most highly recommended.”—Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall

“As harrowing as the whitewater adventure it chronicles, The Barrens is an epic tale of wilderness survival and death in the techno age. The writing throbs with presence: the life-force embedded in Canada’s northern frontier landscape and in the life-scape of its queer young heroine as she journeys toward selfhood. Co-authors Kurt and Ellie Johnson reveal the pulse of identity, born of the stories we weave. A mesmerizing, devastating read.”—Carol Bruneau, Canadian author of Brighten the Corner Where You Are: A Novel Inspired by the Life of Maud Lewis

“The Barrens is the raw and moving story of two young women paddling by canoe down one of North America’s the most remote rivers—of their coming of age, their love, and terrible loss. I’ve rarely come across a text that is so visual, and so tangible. The Barrens is a vivid portrayal of the Canadian subarctic, and of the human drive to persevere.”—Alex Messenger, author of The Twenty-Ninth Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra

#debutnovels #wildernessfiction #canoeing #paddling #Canada #ThelonRiver #queerlit #writers #writingcommunity