Philip Turner’s Books & Writing – Page 5

Books I’ve brought out as publisher; essays and reviews I’ve published

Saluting Daniel Halpern, Venerable Champion of Fiction Writers

June 4, 2015/0 Comments/in Book Biz, Books & Writing, Philip Turner's Books & Writing/by Philip Turner

April 2 2018 Update:

Epic obituary of Drue Heinz who used her wealth to support literature incl #EccoPress (now @eccobooks) #Antaeus, etc. In 1989, an author I edited, Ellen Hunnicutt, won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize for In the Music Library. Sympathies to @Daniel_Halpern. https://t.co/zNfM0wzfcV

— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) April 2, 2018

—-
June 4, 2015

I was delighted to see Publishers Weekly reporting this afternoon that Daniel Halpern of Ecco Press is being awarded The Center for Fiction‘s annual #MaxwellPerkinsPrize for “championing writers of fiction in the United States.” I met Dan in 1987, when his stewardship at the literary magazine Antaeus brought us in to contact. The author of a book I’d edited and published, Suite for Calliope: A Novel of Music and the Circus, won the Drue Heinz Literary Prize, an award sponsored by Antaeus—a literary magazine underwritten by cultural benefactor extraordinaire Drue Heinz and edited by Dan Halpern—for a distinguished body of work in short fiction.

Ironically, I had earlier encountered the circus novel, by an as-yet unpublished writer known to me at first as E.M. Hunnicutt, when I worked as first reader/contest judge at Scribner, who in the 1980s sponsored a first novel prize in Max Perkins’s illustrious name*. Mildred Marmur, then Scribner’s president and publisher, gave me my first job in publishing, following my seven years as a bookseller.

In the Scribner job, working three days every week for six weeks, my brief was to read between 5-50 pages of the more than 700 contest entries, filling out a questionnaire for each one, and recommending those I believed merited second readings. Hunnicutt’s novel was among the 70 or so I recommended (it fascinated me at the time that the number I urged for second readings was practically speaking 10% of the total. By happenstance, I wondered, or some kind of talent factor?

Hunnicutt’s manuscript was among the talented tenth I recommended for second readings, though just before job ended, I learned it wouldn’t advance further in judging. Bouyed my enjoyment of the 100 pages I had gone ahead and read, so I photocopied the title pages of the ms with the author’s contact info. A few weeks later, I got my first full-time job as an acquiring editor, at Walker & Company, I contacted Hunnicutt, who turned out to be Ellen Hunnicutt, and made her novel my first-ever fiction acquisition. Ellen had long gone by E.M. to elide her gender when submitting work to publications such as Boys’ Life. Upon my acquisition of the novel, Ellen made it clear she would now be using her proper name. Some months later, with the novel edited and in galleys, Ellen learned she was recipient of the aforementioned prize named for Drue Heinz, who I wrote about when she died in April 2018. The lead juror for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize in 1987 was Nadine Gordimer, the great South African writer, and resolute anti-apartheid campaigner. Ellen and I were very excited as her first novel headed toward publication in July that year, preceding by a few months a collection of the honored short fiction. A few months later, in an arrangement Anteus had with the University of Pittsburgh Press, Hunnicutt’s short fiction appeared as In the Music Library.

One day, back when Suite For Calliope was still in galleys, I received a printout of a starred review it got in Kirkus. The date was May 4th, and this was the review, written I learned later by Kirkus’s fiction editor at the time, Ann Larson:

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. Ada Cunningham, of Richmount, Indiana. is the partly crippled daughter of gifted and highly eccentric parents: a journalist mother who declares Ada to be a prodigy, raises her as such (with flamboyant Ã‰lan), then dies suddenly when her daughter is eight years old; and a father who is a musical genius, who came from poverty and was a transient violinist and artful dodger as a child, who gives Ada music lessons from the time she’s three, and who is committed to an asylum before she is 16. Life with these parents–as described by the brave, unflinching, quick, forgiving, and heartwrenchingly observant Ada–would be matter enough for many a novel, but this one soars on toward farther ends that keep the reader wide-eyed and enthralled. There’s a penetrating mystery at the heart of it all, and, before its solution: an aunt who comes into the picture with malevolent aims (she may even want to murder Ada), a burned house, legal proceedings–as result of all of which Ada, accused of being both a witch and a madwoman, flees Richmount and takes to the road (as her father did before her), supporting herself by her wits and by her gifted piano playing (in brothels and bars), until at last she finds sanctuary and refuge in the winter quarters of a circus troupe–with setting, color, and cast of characters worthy of yet another novel–where she becomes (and remains) calliope player, composer, and loved member of this wondrous new “”family.”” A summary leaves out far too much: the sturdy grace of Ada’s never-self-pitying voice; the continual feast of homely detail, and detail of music, musicians, and musical instruments, as weft as of the circus and its people; and the breathtaking symbolic depth of the whole, which, touched by the hand of this gifted writer, serves to place Ada’s birth, her flight, and her high artist’s quest among very august novelistic company indeed. A prodigiously masterful novel of profundity, breadth, and continual delight: waiting now only for what ought to be its very, very many readers.

As I learned when I called to tell Ellen the good news that her novel had received a star from the always tough Kirkus, and read the review to her (this was probably before regular use of fax machines.), I learned it was also her birthday. We had quite a celebration on the phone. (May 4th has been a meaningful date in my life on a few occasions, recollections about which I’ve collected in this post.)

When published by Walker, Suite for Calliope sold out its hardcover printing, Dell acquired the paperback rights, and it had a number of laudatory newspaper reviews. Ellen did readings in Wisconsin, near her home—Wisconsin also being the home of the notable circus museum in the town called Baraboo. Years later, when I was working at Kodansha America, and doing a few books in Buddhism, I happened to be reading the Buddhist journal, Tricycle. I came upon an interview with retired New York Knick player and NBA head coach Phil Jackson who praised Suite for Calliope as a meditative novel of ideas that he was currently recommending to friends. All in all, it was a great experience to have with the first novel I ever worked on, made all the better by Drue Heinz and Dan Halpern’s generosity toward the author. We all met in Pittsburgh in the early Spring of 1987, when Ellen received the award for her short stories. To me, it is truly fitting that Dan will receive the later iteration of the Maxwell Perkins Prize. I look forward to congratulating him in person.

To broaden the connections to my professional life even further, and take them all the way back to my roots in bookselling, when I ran Undercover Books, my bookstores in Cleveland, one of the first successful literary books we read and sold was A. Scott Berg’s biography, Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius, more recently a popular movie with Colin Firth as the Scribner’s Editor-in-Chief, and Jude Law as Thomas Wolfe.

* As Editor-in-Chief of Scribner in the 1920s-40s, Perkins edited and published novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, among many acclaimed authors.

Eager to Participate in the Adirondack Center for Writing’s Publishing Conference, June 6-7

April 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Book Biz, Philip Turner's Books & Writing/by Philip Turner

I’m looking forward to being part of the Adirondack Center for Writing’s Publishing Conference on Sunday June 7. I will be evaluating the work of about a dozen writers during the workshop. It should be fun to encounter all this new work and talk about writing and publishing with all the participants. The conference will be held near Lake Placid, NY. If you know any writers who live in that region of upstate NY, please let them know about the event. Thanks to Michael Coffey and Nathalie Costa for the invitation. Click here for more details and see the screenshot below.

Tracking Malaria, its Calamitous History and Worrying Future

February 8, 2015/0 Comments/in Book Biz, Philip Turner's Books & Writing, Publishing & Bookselling, Science/by Philip Turner

Fascinating Q&A on C-Span BookTV w/narrative science writer Karen Masterson, author of The Malaria Project: The US Government’s Secret Mission to Find a Miracle Cure, which chronicles the efforts of the US military which had for long been worried about the disease’s potential to infect American troops serving in far-flung locales. There was a move to find a cure for the mosquito-borne disease. Interesting to me, the book, which looks to be fairly serious science, is published by NAL. They brought out it in 2014, apparently first in hardcover. By my reckoning, NAL is a house long known more for mass-market paperback fiction than narrative nonfiction in hardcover. [It looks like they’ve now brought it out now in trade paperback.] Good for NAL, a nice piece of publishing. More on Masterson and her book via this link. You can view the video via this link on BookTV’s website.

One thing Masterson said amazed me. The effectiveness of bed nets—which have been a useful tool in combating malaria, preventing mosquitoes from biting people while they sleep—is being eroded because mosquitoes, hungry for what scientists call their “blood meal,” are adapting their behavior and learning to bite people earlier in the day when they are still out and about. In watching her talk about this global affliction that still sickens and weakens millions worldwide every year—and kills a considerable percentage of those stricken—I was reminded of a book that I began discussing in 2006 with Paul R. Epstein—a doctor and scientist, and at the time, associate director of Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. Epstein was a trailblazer in studying the effects of climate change on human health. I first heard his distinctive New York accent when he was a guest that year on an episode of “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross. You can still hear it, via this link. Listening to their conversation in a rental car, in a classic ‘driveway moment,’ I learned that due to the planet’s warming temperatures, mosquitoes that transmit malaria have over the past several decades begun doing so at more northern latitudes and higher elevations than they have ever been known to do before. Epstein also discussed the finding that the tick-borne illness dengue fever is also occurring at latitudes and elevations where it was before not seen. Epstein discussed how these diseases are infecting a much greater number of people worldwide due to the warming of our planet.

These are only a couple of the scientific discoveries chronicled in Epstein’s book, Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It, co-written with Dan Ferber, which ultimately came out in 2011. I actually commissioned it in 2007, shortly after I became Editorial Director of Union Square Press at Sterling Publishing, a job that ended two years later when Sterling, a division of Barnes & Noble, shuttered the imprint, a milestone I’ve also written about on this blog. When I left the company, my old bosses quickly canceled Dr. Epstein’s book, although I had nearly completed editing the manuscript. Fortunately, that decision, though very shortsighted, while preventing the book from being published as soon as it might have, it was later picked up by the University of California Press, to be published alongside other important environmental titles. This is a link to the book on U Cal’s website. Sadly, Dr. Epstein, died in November 2011, at age 67, of cancer. Here’s a Washington Post obit on him. Though we fell out of touch after Union Square Press closed, I recall we did speak a couple more times, and he sent me a finished copy of the book, which he inscribed to me with a very generous message, “April 25, 2011 To Phil Turner—The motivating force for this book. Warm wishes, Paul,” pictured below. I didn’t know he was ill, and was stunned by news of his death.

Before Dr. Epstein became a teacher and researcher at Harvard, he had worked as a doctor in places like Mozambique and Angola, devoting himself to the study of tropical diseases and improving public health in developing countries. It was a privilege to meet and work with him. I was really sorry he wasn’t able to make personal appearances in front of audiences, on TV, and on radio, like I first heard him. As I listened to Karen Masterson on C-Span tonight, I found myself wondering if she knows about Paul’s research on the growing incidence of malaria and other illnesses worldwide due to climate change, and if she has perhaps read Dr. Epstein’s book. I see she teaches science writing at Johns Hopkins, so perhaps I’ll have a chance to send her this post and find out. [I did correspond with Ms Masterson and she was interested to learn about Dr Epstein and his book.]

Glad to Be Part of Publishers Weekly’s Coverage on Post-Corporate Life in the Book World

January 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Books & Writing, Personal history, Family, Friends, Philip Turner Book Productions, Philip Turner's Books & Writing/by Philip Turner

I’m glad to be one of three editors featured in a Publishers Weekly article about how editorial professionals with long careers in-house have re-made themselves post-corporate life. The other editors are Pat Mulcahy and Joan Hilty. It’s up online today, and will be a spread with photos in the magazine’s print issue on Monday. I’ll scan a copy of the print story to share on this blog when I get a print copy, but meantime here is a link to the story, headlined “Publishing, After a Life in Publishing.” In particular, I was happy to explain to PW reporter Calvin Reid the role that my blogs have played in my post-corporate career, which Calvin characterized it this way: “He launched a blog, the Great Gray Bridge, on his website, philipsturner.com, and got his first job, ‘by word of mouth.’ He credits the blog and his writing with bringing in work. ‘People come to my blog and find out that I’m offering editorial services,’ he said.”

Also very glad my author client Mike Orenduff and his superb six-book POT THIEF mystery series are both mentioned in the article, along with a mention of Open Road Integrated Media, the company where I licensed the books in 2013, to editors Tina Pohlman and Philip Rappaport. Until I get the print issue, Below are scanned images of each of the story’s three pages, and then a screenshot of the online story’s first six paragraphs. Please note I submitted three corrections for the story that have been input on the online version.

Readers of this blog, please note, I submitted three corrections for the story that have been input on the online version. For the record, they are: 1) In the 4th paragraph, while I was first “executive editor” at Carroll & Graf, I was “editor-in-chief” my last couple years there. 2) In the 5th paragraph, the author of the POT THIEF series is “J. Michael Orenduff” (not J. Michale Orendoff). 3) In the 14th paragraph, the correct quote about my writing is that I found I had the “psychic elbow room” to write, not “psychic space.”

Glad for Revival of THE REVENANT, a Great Adventure Novel

January 12, 2015/1 Comment/in Art, Film, TV, Photography, Fine Printing & Design, Book Biz, Personal History, Family, Friends, Education, Travels, Philip Turner's Books & Writing/by Philip Turner

JANUARY 2016 UPDATE: Readers of this blog may recall my connection to The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, mentioned on this site a year ago in the post below, after I learned the book, originally published in 2002, was about to be reissued by a new publisher, the basis of a major motion picture. I saw the movie last weekend, and found it quite engrossing, even at more than 2 1/2 hours duration. The cinematography is exceptional, the acting quite believable, and the storytelling very powerful. I recall that author Michael Punke was already then having discussions about possible film adaptations, since the Glass story had already once been filmed, as “Man in the Wilderness,” with Richard Harris and John Huston in 1971. Even so, over the years no film resulted, that until word came last year of the cinematic collaboration between Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s and Leonardo DiCaprio’s. As the credits rolled following the film last weekend, I saw that the production of course credited the book, though with a proviso I’d not seen before, stating that the movie was “Based in Part on the Novel by Michael Punke.” I imagine the wording was mutually agreed to between the author’s agent and the producers, because the two works do diverge. But I don’t criticize the filmmakers on that score, for as Punke himself wrote in an Historical Note at the end of the novel, the confirmed history surrounding Hugh Glass’s life is scant—little more is known for certain beyond the fact he lived, was a skilled tracker, was mauled by a grizzly bear during an 1823 expedition with the Rocky Mountain Fur Trading Company, following which he was left for dead by two of his likely companions, a miscreant named John Fitzgerald and a teenaged Jim Bridger; Bridger ultimately became a much more famous mountain man than Glass, with modern tourist sites in the Mountain West named after him. I’m pleased to see the movie is bringing more attention to the gripping novel, which is a bestseller in the Picador reissue. I’m also pleased to remind people about the book, since as the Obama administration’s Deputy Trade Representative to the WTO in Geneva, Switzerland, Michael Punke is not permitted to directly promote his own commercial interests. I’m happy to stand in for him, then, as relatives of his have been doing at premieres of the movie, which has now garnered many Academy Award nominations.

When I was a retail bookseller with Undercover Books, this is exactly the sort of novel that we would read in advance galleys from the publisher, then order 50 copies, and sell them all in the book’s first month on sale. If you enjoy adventure tales, I recommend you read this one, a gripping survival story based on the life of a real American who traverses a great swath of the inter-mountain west in a quest for justice, less than 20 years after the Lewis and Clark Expedition had opened the region to exploration.

—
January 2015nant-front.jpg”> Revenant front the BN Review recently I was delighted to discover that one of the most engrossing novels I ever edited and published—The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge—has been reissued and is being made in to a major movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who recently directed “Birdman.” The novel, by Michael Punke, was published in 2002, when I was an editorial executive at Carroll & Graf. It’s inspired by the epic life and adventures of a historical figure, Hugh Glass. He was a frontiersman and fur trapper who in 1823 was part of a westward expedition spanning what is today Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. While foraging for game, away from the troop, Glass was attacked and severely mauled by a grizzly bear. Grievously wounded and bleeding, with the skin on his back nearly flayed off his torso, Glass was still conscious when his comrades found him. Believing that Glass would surely die soon, the leader of the troop ordered two men to stay with him until he expired, then bury him and catch up to the group. In the midst of this death watch, a band of Indians approached the camp, panicking the two men: they grabbed Glass’s rifle and hunting knife and fled. Deserted, defenseless, and enraged at being abandoned, Glass refuses to succumb to his wounds; he survives, determined to recover his weapons, vowing revenge on the men who left him to die. The novel is beautifully written and reads like a timeless adventure story. Talk about a film adaptation of the novel began years ago, and I’m delighted to see now it’s really happening, and with such a high profile team. Hugh Glass did inspire one earlier film, in 1971, when actor Richard Harris was cast as the Glass figure in “Man in the Wilderness,” a rather lurid and unexceptional movie. Punke’s telling of this epic saga, with Glass crawling and dragging himself across wild terrain until he was again able to walk, has all the elements for a great movie and I’m hopeful that is what the production will lead to.

Punke’s agent Tina Bennett submitted the manuscript to me soon after 9/11, an event and aftermath that I was close to, as the offices of Carroll & Graf and Avalon Publishing Group were only a few blocks from the World Trade Center. As I chronicled on this blog on Sept 11, 2012, in a post titled Remembering 9/11/01—Running Through a Dust Cloud in Lower Manhattan, the exertions of that day left me with nagging leg injuries that persisted for most of the year that followed. In fact, when I attended the book launch for The Revenant, held in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2002, I took the train from NYC using a cane to help me walk on a still-tender ankle.

Though novels don’t often have subtitles or reading lines, I suggested to the author that we use one here. We had quite an evocative title, though the word ‘revenant’ (a being that returns from the dead) was not then and still isn’t a widely familiar term. Glass’s odyssey seeking revenge and justice resonated powerfully with the spirit of the time, so “A Novel of Revenge” seemed the right way to position the book for readers. The publisher reissuing the book now is Picador, part of Macmillan, and I’m glad to see in online listings they’ve chosen to retain the reading line. Interestingly, they’ve reissued the novel in hardcover, not paperback, a somewhat unusual choice for a book published more than a decade ago, though perhaps a sign of the publisher’s confidence in its continuing relevance.

Michael Punke has written two nonfiction books in the years since 2002, both in Western history, Fire and Brimstone: The North Butte Mining Disaster of 1917 and Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West. The book launch for The Revenant was in DC because Punke worked for a law firm there. Among the hosts at the party was a mentor and colleague to Punke, Mickey Kantor, a lawyer involved in international trade who’d served as chair of the Clinton campaign for president in 1992. Punke now works as President Obama’s Deputy United States Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. According to this article in Maxim, his ability to engage in promoting his books is very limited by his sensitive position in the federal government. I’m very glad to know that Michael Punke’s first book is coming back in to print, and that a movie is in the works. We have been in touch occasionally over the past decade, and I’m pleased that I have so much good news to congratulate him about when we’re next in touch. Above is the front and below the back cover of the paperback edition of The Revenant from 2003.

The DOJ Just Doesn’t Get the Book Biz

December 24, 2014/0 Comments/in Books & Writing, Philip Turner's Books & Writing, Publishing & Bookselling/by Philip Turner

Despite an overwhelming preponderance of comments that were critical of the proposed remedy in the agency model case involving ebook pricing, the Dept. of Justice announced a ruling yesterday that was a huge disappointment to me and many people in the book business. The DOJ rejected the arguments of many, including me, who pointed to Amazon.com as the corporation whose conduct warranted scrutiny, not the defendant publishers. Worse, the DOJ dismissed comments critical of the settlement imposed on three of the Big Six publishers as stemming from fiduciary self-interest. Although people are definitely concerned about their livelihoods, they are also concerned about the future of the business and whether publishers and authors are going to be able to carry on at all. The DOJ claimed it was all about consumers paying less, but I think to only look at price is to miss the larger picture. Unfortunately, I think Shelf Awareness got it right when they headed their coverage, “Justice Dept. to Book Industry, ‘Drop Dead'”.