Superb profile of Lawrence Ellsworth, Translator of Classic Dumas Novels
Readers of this blog may recall that in years past I’ve written about Lawrence Ellsworth, a client of my literary agency, who is translating all six* novels in Alexandre Dumas’s classic Musketeers Cycle. Three volumes have already published by Pegasus Books—The Red Sphinx, The Three Musketeers, and Twenty Years After—with a fourth volume, Blood Royal, due out later this year.
Amazing as Ellsworth’s enterprise is, I should point out that it is actually a pen name, and that under his real name, Lawrence Schick, he has an equally impressive résumé. Both of his names are featured in a superb profile and interview that journalist and novelist Andrew Ervin has recently published in the Brooklyn Rail. The profile portion begins like this:
As far as I can tell, Lawrence Ellsworth is responsible for one of the biggest literary projects happening right now in the English language. Like William T. Vollmann’s “Seven Dreams” series of novels about the European occupation of the New World and Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s Drafts, an interlocking and cross-referencing “poem of a life,” Ellsworth is working on a massive and daunting scale. He’s translating the entirety of Alexandre Dumas’s stories of The Three Musketeers (1844), all 1.5 million words of it. The third volume, Twenty Years After, appeared late last year.
Twenty Years After restores a chapter that Dumas once serialized in his native French but which has never before appeared in English. It also, as with the previous and future volumes, moves past the Victorian-era translations that were, per Ellsworth’s introduction, for an “audience that was uncomfortable with frank depictions of violence and sexuality.” Those old translations, he reminds us, “employed a style of elevated diction that was deemed appropriate for historical novels of the 19th century, but seems stiff, long-winded, and passive to today’s readers.” In Ellsworth’s hands, these stories of swashbuckling and all-for-one-and-one-for-all friendship feel new again. The Three Musketeers is an enormously entertaining tale for the ages.
A few paragraphs later, Ervin brings up the Schick side of his persona:
It so happens that Lawrence Ellsworth is the pen name of Lawrence Schick, who was an early employee of TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons [the role-playing game]. There, he wrote White Plume Mountain (1979), which I personally regard as the greatest D&D adventure module of all time. He’s also the co-creator of the earliest version of the D&D setting Mystara, in which my own long-running campaign is set even now. Since then, among other pursuits, Ellsworth served as Loremaster for the Elder Scrolls Online games and now lives in Dublin, where he is hard at work writing a new mobile game.
Ellsworth was generous enough to correspond with me via email in January and February, during which time we discussed world-building, how to write an epic role-playing game (RPG) adventure, and the challenges of adapting Dumas for current audiences. There’s a unique and profound joy in getting to pick the brain of a multi-talented writer whose work I’ve known since I was a kid and who’s had such a huge impact on my own creative life.
When the piece moves in to the interview portion, Ervin asks how Lawrence undertook the mammoth task of translating Dumas:
We were looking for a subject for our next game when I remembered Dumas and his musketeers. It turned out to be a great choice, and in the process of doing the research for [what became] The King’s Musketeers I got hooked on the characters and the period all over again, so much so that I started doing independent study into Early Modern Europe and France in the 17th century. I decided that I wanted to write historical fiction in that setting and began collecting materials.
I was teaching myself French and rereading Dumas, and began to realize that his writing wasn’t creaky and old-fashioned, but his Victorian English translations were. Reading Dumas in the original French was a revelation: dynamic prose, crackling dialogue, vivid scenes, plus he was funny as hell. Most of the English translations of his work paled in comparison.
By this time I was reading beyond Dumas’s famous novels and into his more obscure works, and I kept coming across references to a musketeers-period swashbuckler from late in his career called The Comte de Moret, but there was no extant English translation and it was impossible to find. Finally I came across French reprint copies of its two volumes in the bouquiniste stalls in Paris, and though the novel was unfinished, it was grand stuff, genuine Dumas bursting with all his color, humor, and joie de vivre. I’d done my own translation of The Three Musketeers as part of my learning-French project, and as I was flying back from Paris, it suddenly occurred to me that I could translate Moret and from that idea was born the literary reconstruction that became The Red Sphinx.
Ervin’s last question is a good one:
Rail: Why is it that Dumas’s stories still feel so vital, especially right now?
Ellsworth: Dumas’s work remains vital and relevant over 150 years later because his best novels speak to the problem of courage, of how an individual can find the strength and means to do what’s right despite the constraints of society, family, and convention. This is a problem that never goes away, a matter that every generation has to face for itself. Unlike many of the heroes of historical fiction, Dumas’s characters are complex, three-dimensional humans of depth and contradiction, people for whom wrestling with these problems is no easy matter. Look at Cardinal Richelieu, an antagonist and seeming villain in The Three Musketeers, yet a protagonist in The Red Sphinx. Because his novels are exciting and plot-heavy, and because his early translators cut out the sex, softened the language, and dialed back the violence, in the early 20th century Dumas’s work was miscategorized as “Boys’ Adventures,” a label that has stuck for far too long. His best work is long overdue for a re-assessment, at least in the Anglophone world.
I recommend you read the whole profile and interview which combined are quite a bit longer than the excerpts I’ve provided here. I’m going to check out Andrew Ervin’s work, whose bio states:
Andrew Ervin is the author of the novel Burning Down George Orwell’s House and the novella collection Extraordinary Renditions. His most recent book is Bit by Bit: How Video Games Transformed Our World.
And if you’d like to know how a prominent critic assesses the new Dumas translations by Lawrence Ellsworth, please consider this in a review from the estimable Washington Post book critic Michael Dirda:
“En garde! In Lawrence Ellsworth’s excellent, compulsively readable translation, The Red Sphinx is just the book to see you through the January doldrums. And maybe those of February, too.
If your interest extends to other classic tales of adventure, I suggest you also check out the anthology Ellsworth edited for Pegasus The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure, with tales by Rafael Sabatini, Conan Doyle, Baroness Orczy, and others. 
*In the end, there will be eight novels in Ellsworth’s rendering of the Dumas canon in to English, because he is splitting some of the longer French versions in to two volumes.
First review of Nate Patrin’s “Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop” is a Winner
Due to the pandemic, University of Minnesota Press pushed the publication date of my agency client Nate Patrin’s new book, Bring That Beat Back: How Sampling Built Hip-Hop, from April 28 to May 26. Evidently, not everyone got the message, but that’s just fine because the book’s first review in a consumer publication has already appeared, and critic Adam Ellsworth, writing for the Boston-area outlet The Arts Fuse, enjoyed the book very much. The headline is “Bring That Beat Back”—A Stellar History Of The Art Of Sampling, and the first line below that tells readers, “Nate Patrin’s magnificently written and wildly informative new book argues for the artistry of sampling, its potential for beauty.” I invite you to read the whole review, but for a quick hit, please see the screenshots below with two key sections of the piece. I’m optimistic there will be much more coverage of the book in weeks to come, but until that I’m very excited for my author, and offer him hearty congratulations! To have the first review of one’s debut book be such a positive and thoughtful essay is very heartening indeed!
As a postscript for this good news blog post, you’ll also find here a lengthy Spotify playlist of all the music associated with the book.
A Raucous Salute to Doctors, Nurses, Frontline Workers
Over the past seven weeks, most nights of the lockdown imposed during the pandemic, when 7pm rolls around—the time when New Yorkers have been saluting essential workers—I’ve been in my apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, where I ring a small bell I have, or bang a letter opener on my metal travel mug. However, tonight I had gone out for a walk around 6:40, and stayed outside to experience tonight’s clamor at the top of the hour from ground level. It’s an enjoyable release when everyone gets to share their appreciation of people who can’t stay locked in, who go to work, save lives, drive public transit, and make sure we can buy food. When this is over, there won’t be much to miss about it, but I’ll be happy to remember the raucous celebrations.
A Tribute to the Old Man of the Mountain, Franconia Notch, White Mountains—RIP
I was extremely lucky to spend a good chunk of my young adult years as a student at Franconia College, in Franconia, New Hampshire, located in the White Mountains, near the dramatic topographical feature called Franconia Notch. I made many close friends while a student at the college from 1973-77, like the late Robert Henry Adams and Karl Petrovich, with whom I formed a troika (the power trio’s pictured below), both of them lost to me along the way, sadly, and other good friends whom I still know and appreciate today. Franconia College was an experimental institution, part of the ferment of the times, an educational environment I relished, and am still grateful I experienced. The scenery that I saw everyday in the area and from a small cabin where I lived with my black Lab Noah was majestic, as pictures here will show.
I often photographed the jut-jawed Old Man of the Mountain, aka The Great Stone Face and The Profile, a historic feature of the landscape that humans began marveling at centuries long before New Hampshire was settled by descendants of European colonists. In later decades, the craggy rock face was held together by cables and guy wires, all of which collapsed in 2003.
Going back to the nineteenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne published “The Great Stone Face” in 1850, a tale about the denizens of the region, and the legendary profile that towered above them. He wrote, “It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan, had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, withs long bridge, and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.”
Click here for more pictures.
On Spring Evenings During the 2020 Pandemic
The unfolding virus crisis, officially a pandemic since March 11, has now stretched on for more than three months, if one goes back to the first known case in the US, reported by ABC News, from Jan. 21 in Washington state. The first news report from Wuhan was even before that, the last day of 2019, Dec. 31.
There are many aspects of this situation, and the experience of living through it, that I ponder every day, beginning with the terrible suffering and sickness so many are enduring, and their families and friends, and the heroic efforts of doctors, nurses, medical techs, aides, cleaners, plus essential workers like bus drivers, cabbies, and grocery store checkers. After the grief and the solidarity I feel on a regular basis, there’s another experiential element that hits me every day in the late afternoons and early evenings. The time now being 7pm on the Upper West Side of Manhattan—where we just held our daily raucous salute to essential workers—I’m particularly mindful of it right now.
As shown above, when the crisis began building it was still late Winter. Though we didn’t have much snow this winter, it was very cold in February, in the 20s. I got a taxing dry cough then, which worried me. I thought I might’ve acquired it, or worsened it, during a cold bike ride I took one late afternoon in February, when I imbibed too much cold air, deep in to my lungs. This can happen while cycling, I’ve found, because when you’re pedaling and pumping hard, standing up on the pedals, out of the saddle going up hill, as I do in Riverside Park, I’m really breathing hard. That’s what had happened to me, I figured, though with word of the virus intensifying, I worried, too. (The cough persisted for weeks, and I later saw a nurse practitioner at my doctor’s office. We discussed if it might be Covid-19, but I didn’t have enough other symptoms so she thought not.) Then on March 6, the annual change back to Daylight Saving Time arrived, filling the second half of every day with much more daylight. Soon it became early Spring, with fruit trees in the park breaking out in blossoms, and now on April 25, it’s mid-Spring. Each day, even when it’s cloudy, runs for more hours full of daylight, stretching longer into the evening before dark finally falls.
Most years I greatly appreciate the longer days of sunlight, but now with the quarantining, necessary though it is, I feel oppressed by the long days. Now, time lays heavy on my hands. This is especially true because, as alluded to above, it’s a personal routine established over many years for me—after a work day editing and doing my job as a literary agent— to be out late in the day taking rides on my bike riding along the Hudson River on the Cherry Walk in the hours approaching sunset, taking pictures with my iPhone, soaking in the last rays of the day.
And yet, the last time I was out on my bike? Early February, around the time I took in too much cold air on a ride. Of course it’s warmer now, but I don’t fancy riding with a mask on, nor do I even relish being out under the circumstances. And I would invariably jostle the mask with my helmet, and my glasses would fog, especially inconvenient as bright daylight often makes it necessary to wear my sunglasses. These past weeks I have been out for some walks down to the river, but my range doesn’t stretch nearly as far as I can ramble on my bike. And, I do want to observe Gov Cuomo’s default recommendation to stay home as much as possible.
To round out this personal post, I’ll share two photos I took in late 2019, during bike rides, before the crisis, and a picture I took last week, while on a walk along the Hudson River.
Sold: “Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Life” by Todd Goddard
I’m very excited to announce that under the banner of my literary agency Philip Turner Book Productions I’ve sold Devouring Time: Jim Harrison, a Life to Blackstone Publishing in print, ebook, and audiobook, on behalf of my author client Todd Goddard, associate professor of literary studies at Utah Valley University. This will be the first biography to chronicle the fascinating, large life of the acclaimed poet and fiction writer (1937-2016). Goddard will examine all aspects of Harrison’s creative life, and how he incorporated major life milestones in to his work. Among those momentous events:
- The fatal car wreck that killed Jim’s father and sister when he was twenty-four; he blamed himself as they were heading to a weekend stay at a family cabin for which Jim had intended to join them until his last-minute cancellation delayed their departure. The tragedy spiraled Jim in to a deep depression, while also spurring his dedication to writing, as he soon after published his earliest poems and met Denise Levertov who shepherded his first book to publication, a poetry collection from Norton.
- Jim received an introduction to Jack Nicholson who became a patron, supporting him financially through the completion of the three novellas that would become the collection, Legends of the Fall; this relationship led to work on film projects and relief from the money woes that had long burdened him. Through this he also formed associations with many Hollywood figures including Anjelica Huston, John Huston, John Belushi, director Bob Rafelson and his wife Toby, who had made the match with Nicholson, and Stanley Kubrick, with whom Jim played chess.
- Working with publisher Seymour Lawrence, who embraced the idea of publishing a collection of novellas, an unorthodox experiment that other publishers of the day were not eager to take on. Interviews by the biographer with Harrison’s longtime agent Bob Datilla explore the relationship between the writer and publisher.
Harrison’s sense of place will also be key to the narrative, as Goddard explores the importance of landscape in Jim’s poetry and fiction, mapping his life and situating him topographically. This process will unfold throughout the book in a number of important locales, from the lakes and forests of Michigan, to the crashing surf of the Florida Keys, to Greenwich Village where he drank with Jack Kerouac at the Five Spot bar, to hardscrabble Durango, Mexico, as well as Montana, Hollywood, Arizona, and Provence, France.
Todd Goddard regularly teaches Harrison’s fiction and poetry, and has presented research on Harrison’s works for the Jim Harrison Society at the American Literature Association’s annual conference. His research is well underway, already taking him in to the Harrison archive courtesy of the late author’s estate, thanks to an introduction by generous executives at Grove Atlantic. The archive includes correspondence with Raymond Carver, Francis Ford Coppola, Annie Dillard, Louise Erdrich, Allen Ginsberg, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Norman Mailer, Gary Snyder, David Foster Wallace, Terry Tempest Williams, and Tom McGuane.
Goddard is also in touch with the The Jim Harrison Author Page on Facebook, where more than 10,000 fans celebrate the writer’s life, from preparing a special cassoulet to arranging bookstore discussions of Harrison’s work.
In Harrison’s later years, he was twice a featured guest on Anthony Bourdain’s TV shows, gaining a status as an elder statesman of American letters and enlightened living. With such biographies as Madison Smartt Bell’s work on Robert Stone (Doubleday, published this month), it’s a propitious time for this biography of Jim Harrison.
Sold: “WAR DIARIST: The Many Battles of Richard Tregaskis” by Ray E. Boomhower
January 2021 update: The book on Richard Tregaskis will be published in Fall 2021. The author and University of New Mexico Press have settled on a final title: Richard Tregaskis: Reporting under Fire from Guadalcanal to Vietnam.
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Delighted that I’ve sold Ray E. Boomhower’s WAR DIARIST: The Many Battles of Richard Tregaskis by independent scholar Ray E. Boomhower to University of New Mexico Press (UNMP) for publication in fall 2021. In 1943, combat reporter Tregaskis published GUADALCANAL DIARY, acquired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, which became an instant bestseller and the first book to emerge from the Pacific theater, when Americans had had little chance to read about the fighting there. Here are some grafs from the pitch letter I sent to the editor at UNMP, and photos that will be in the book, including one of the lanky reporter.
In 1942-43, Tregaskis (1916-73) was one of just two reporters “embedded” with US forces in the Pacific, before the specialized use of that term existed. He observed the fierce fighting between the Americans and Japanese, sending daily dispatches that had to be cleared by military censors before they could go to his editors at the International News Service. Some things he did not share with any editors or readers, as Boomhower writes:
“During his time on Guadalcanal, Tregaskis and United Press International reporter Bob Miller armed themselves with Colt 1911A1 pistols in direct contravention of U.S. War Department regulations prohibiting correspondents from using weapons. “We knew and the Marines knew that if we ran up against Jap[anese] snipers, they weren’t going to ask for our credentials.” Upon leaving Guadalcanal on a B-17 bomber, Tregaskis also helped man one of the plane’s .50-caliber machine guns and fired on an attacking Japanese Zero fighter.”
While breaking the mold for a war reporter, Boomhower notes that Tregaskis also harbored a distressing medical secret:
“Neither his colleagues in the field or his superiors at the International News Service knew that when he began his work in the Pacific Tregaskis had to contend with a recently diagnosed condition—diabetes, a debilitating disease that plagued his family.”
At one point, while briefly laid over in Pearl Harbor, he sent an expanded collection of his combat dispatches to a wire service editor who shopped the manuscript to more than a half dozen book publishers in NY. Bennett Cerf read it overnight and acquired the rights the next day. This became Guadalcanal Diary, an early example of “an instant book”; it was an immediate bestseller for Random House, and before WWII had ended, a Hollywood movie with Anthony Quinn, William Bendix, and Richard Conte.
At another point during Tregaskis’s reporting career, while covering combat action in Italy, the 6-foot, 5-inch tall reporter was struck by an artillery shell that punctured his helmet and nearly killed him. Following brain surgery—when a metal plate was inserted into his skull—and a difficult five-month recuperation back in the States, he learned to speak again by reciting poetry, and in June 1944 resumed work, reporting from the Normandy beachhead established on D-Day.
Boomhower’s book will chronicle Tregaskis’s whole story from before the war, and beyond. He was a Harvard grad, Class of ’38, whose classmates included Kermit Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, Jr., and the historian Theodore White. Tregaskis knew Ernie Pyle and the photographer Robert Capa.
I’ve found Boomhower’s writing in the sample chapters as alive and vivid about reporting under extreme and dangerous challenges as Tregaskis’s own indelible war reporting. By the late 1960s, more than three million copies of Guadalcanal Diary had been sold and it had been translated into twelve languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Danish. The book is in print as a Modern Library edition with an Introduction by Mark Bowden, while many of Tregaskis’s wartime dispatches are included in volume 1 of the Library of America’s book Reporting World War II. Ray E. Boomhower is senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press. He is the author of more than ten books including Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Democratic Primary (2008, Indiana University Press), which won the Indiana Center for the Book’s 2009 award in nonfiction.
