Posts

Sold to Penguin Random House Audio: Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War, 1930-1949   by Janet Somerville

/1 Comment/in , , /by

I’m excited to announce a deal I’ve made for a major new audiobook to be published on May 18 2021 by Penguin Random House Audio for Toronto writer Janet Somerville’s widely praised book Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn’s Letters of Love & War, 1930-1949 (Firefly Books, hardcover 2019). Tony Award-winning actress Ellen Barkin*, a Gellhorn enthusiast and admirer of Somerville’s book, will be the voice of the audio edition. You can pre-order the audiobook via this link.

As with photojournalist Ruth Gruber** (1911-2016), Gellhorn (1908-1998, b. St Louis), was a trailblazer in her field. From the pitch letter I sent to acquiring editor Megan Mills at Penguin Random House Audio:

Journalist. Pioneer. Feminist. Human rights advocate. 

Martha Gellhorn was all of these and more, leaving her role as wife of Ernest Hemingway a lesser light among many noteworthy milestones. Rendered sensitively here by Janet Somerville in a curated collection of letters braided together with a biographical narrative threaded through the correspondence, Yours, for Probably Always brings readers into Gellhorn’s life and career shaped by her combat reporting, all spanning the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, WWII, the refugee crisis following the aftermath of the war and the Holocaust, and the Cold War. Somerville also highlights Gellhorn’s friendships, her lovers, and a life lived intentionally. 

Gellhorn’s work speaks to our times; she was a champion of the poor and dispossessed, a vocal critic of war and brutality, and a warrior against oppression. Her weapons were her pen and her words. Her circle included Gary Cooper, Dorothy Parker, Sylvia Beach, Colette, John Dos Passos, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Adlai Stevenson, and Robert Capa, a dear friend. Among her regular correspondents reflected in this collection were Leonard Bernstein; Eleanor Roosevelt; H.G. Wells; Maxwell Perkins; Charles Scribner; US General James Gavin, a high-profile critic of America’s War in Vietnam, and a romantic partner to Gellhorn; French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel; and of course, Hemingway.

Along with the letters, the book includes examples of Gellhorn’s journalism, fiction, and excerpts from her journals. An ardent anti-fascist, Gellhorn was a life-long advocate of social justice and a strong-willed, self-made modern woman. Yours, for Probably Always shines a light on this intrepid reporter and fearless figure.

The reception for Yours, for Probably Always

When the hardcover edition was published it carried glowing endorsements from Ward Just and Azar Nafisi, seen on the book jacket above, receiving wide coverage and superb reviews, including a starred Kirkus; coverage in the Guardian, where it was their Book of the Day; the NY Review of Books; and some Twitter love from actor Alec Baldwin:

  • “Somerville makes an impressive book debut with a life of novelist, journalist, and intrepid war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, told through a captivating selection of her letters to friends, family, husbands, and lovers. The volume is enriched by Somerville’s biographical narrative and her decision to include responses of many recipients and, in some cases, letters between individuals who were especially significant in Gellhorn’s life… An engrossing collection that burnishes Gellhorn’s reputation as an astute observer, insightful writer, and uniquely brave woman.”—Kirkus Reviews, a starred review
  • “It’s history as it was lived, and shared in intimate emotional detail… Curated with valuable context by Janet Somerville… her own love letter of sorts to a woman she calls ‘a wonder.’”—Lyse Doucet, Guardian Books,
  • “Martha Gellhorn was many things, including a novelist and short story writer, but a ‘relator of Wars”’ is the most important of them. . . . As early as 1935, her regular correspondent Allen Grover wrote to Gellhorn that ‘I should one day publish your collected letters. They’re magnificent prose.’ They are—and they are also precious traces of the turbulent, passionate, relentless, self-examined inner life of a woman of honor whose indomitable character is beautifully summed up by her mother in Somerville’s invigorating collection: ‘She lacks everything that makes living easy, she possesses most things that make it worthwhile.’”—Fintan O’Toole, New York Review of Books
  • The CBC radio program Day 6 aired a feature on Somerville’s book which explained,
    “Though [Gellhorn’s] dispatches from Normandy and Spain, which documented a mother’s grief after her child was killed by a bomb, brought humanity to tragedy for years, it was a report on Dachau…that made her famous. ‘My personal war aim was to get into Dachau,’ Gellhorn [said] in a 1983 TV interview. ‘I did get there and I was there the day the war ended. I didn’t have to be objective, in the sense that what was there to be objective about? It was a total and absolute horror and all I did was report it as it was.'”

Janet Somerville and Ellen Barkin

Somerville learned of Barkin’s interest in Gellhorn in 2019 when she offered to send the actor a copy of the hardcover book. They continued exchanging correspondence, by letter, text, and Twitter. Barkin told Somerville that she loved reading a few pages every night before bed, with Gellhorn’s powerful words, and Somerville’s narrative about her, in her mind’s ear.

In summer 2020, the pair spoke voice-to-voice for the first time, and Janet planted a seed about Ellen becoming her book’s voice, should there be an audiobook. Ellen responded with [almost] unprintable alacrity: “It would be my fucking honor.”

Around this time, I became Janet’s agent and my pitch to Penguin Random House Audio came soon after.

We cannot imagine anyone more suited to give Martha Gellhorn’s words vibrant life than Ellen Barkin. Like Gellhorn, she is intelligent, funny, indefatigable, an outspoken champion of the most disenfranchised among us, and a true supporter of social justice, willing to give voice to important issues when a less brave person would turn away. We are delighted she is adding her singular luster to Yours, for Probably Always.

Hemingway on PBS

We’re excited to announce the audiobook this week featuring the voice of Ellen Barkin, ahead of Ken Burns’s new documentary “Hemingway,” which will air on PBS, April 5-7.

—

*  Ellen Barkin was awarded the Tony in 2011 for her role in “The Normal Heart,” her Broadway debut. She broke out as a film actress in 1982 with her performance in “Diner.” She’s also known for her performances in “Tender Mercies” (1983), “Big Easy” (1986), “Sea of Love” (1989), “This Boy’s Life” (1993), “Ocean’s Thirteen” (2007), and “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017).

** Like Gellhorn, Ruth Gruber was a foreign correspondent. I’ve often wondered if Gellhorn and Gruber crossed paths, as their careers tracked closely. Along with reporting from abroad, both women served in the FDR administration—Gellhorn in the Federal Relief Emergency Administration (FERA), and Gruber as Interior Secretary Harold Ickes’ Special Representative to Alaska. I worked with Gruber for twenty years, publishing six of her eighteen books, including Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America (Three Rivers Press, 2000, and a CBS mini-series with Natasha Richardson as Ruth Gruber) and Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation (Union Square Press, 2008).

 

 

 

 

Read more

Righteous Words from Shakespeare, So Pertinent to Today’s Refugee Crisis—Read by Sir Ian McKellen

/0 Comments/in , /by

%22Mountainish Inhumanity%22
In what appears to have been November 2010, at the Savannah Film Festival, Sir Ian McKellen had occasion to read lines of Shakespeare from a play called “The Book of Sir Thomas More,” words set in the voice of More, a councillor to King Henry VIII. Shakespeare didn’t write the original, but contributed to rewriting portions of the drama with other contributors some 400 years ago. It is not a well-known work, and McKellen says here that it may have never been performed for an audience until 1964. This 5-minute youtube clip is linchpin of a good Washington Post article published today by reporter Karla Adam, the headline for which opens this post, pretty well summing up the message of the words read by Sir Ian.

Adam also reports that the text of the passage, in Shakespeare’s own handwriting, has recently been digitized by the British Museum, and is featured in a new exhibit at the Folger Library in Washington, DC. McKellen explains that earlier, a year before his appearance at the Savannah Film Festival, in London at Trafalgar Square, or St Martin-in-the-Fields, as it would’ve been known in Shakespeare’s time, a man and his gay partner were set up on three hooligans, who killed him. The location is also where in the play More gives this speech. Below is a still from the very powerful video, and click here for the video itself. You may want to first read the Washington Post article for full context as I had done before I watched it.

I’ll add a New York City note to this post, about “a celebrity sighting.” Though they don’t occur all that often here, that’s what I dub them. On two occasions my wife and son and I have had occasion to meet and speak with Sir Ian McKellen. He is approachable, down-to-earth, and charming. The first time was in 2003, soon after “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies, had premiered. The three of us had just seen the movie a few days before, and we bumped in to him at the old Weber’s Odd-Lot discount store near W 72nd St and Broadway. He was in town doing a Strindberg play on Broadway with Dame Helen Mirren. With my son Ewan, then about seven years old, we found ourselves behind him in line, while my wife was elsewhere in the store for a moment. The wait in line was long enough for me to spot him, nudge my son, and whisper who was in front of us. I leaned in a bit toward the gentleman and without invading his space, said something like, “Sir Ian, congratulations on all the great roles you have this season.” Turning toward us with a warm smile we began conversing. I mentioned we’d only a couple days earlier seen the movie and had found it breathtaking. I added, “We miss Gandalf,” thinking of the fall in to the abyss he’d suffered fighting the Balrog. Sir Ian adopted the deep voice of the Grey Wizard, and addressing Ewan especially, he intoned reassuringly, “He’ll be changed, but he’ll be back. He’ll be changed, but he’ll be back.”

The other time was a few years later, at BAM where the three of us had just seen him perform as King Lear. We waited afterward at the stage door and came out to greet the handful of fans clustered there. He spoke to each group for a few minutes, for a warm and friendly chat. He is a good and decent man, and his humanity shines through in this remarkably fluent rendering of Shakespeare words about refugees, or “strangers” as they’re called here.
Sir Ian McKellen

Read more

Helping People Feel Better During a Lousy Week

/0 Comments/in , /by

A Facebook post of mine that I published this past Thursday night, Nov 19, is having a very wide popularity, more than I anticipated when I put it up. I was inspired to share by Farzin Yousefian and Samantha Jackson, the Toronto couple pictured here who, before their recent marriage, decided to donate to a charity the money they’d up till then been planning to spend on a big wedding reception—enough money to sponsor a family of four Syrian refugees in Canada for one year. It’s had more than 800 1000 people ‘like’ it on Facebook, with 150 shares, from among my Facebook friends, of course, but also by people I don’t know. That’s because I choose to label my posts as ‘Public’ on Facebook, and not just for ‘Friends.’ Meantime, a bit.ly link I’d created from the CBC.ca News article about their generosity, which I used to make the post, has been passed along nearly 1,500 more than 2,000 times Friday as of Sunday night. It’s elicited many kind comments, and one bigoted hater, whom we as a group rebutted and rebuffed. I see the reception for the post as a good-news story about a truly feel-good story, amid a week when so much malevolent violence and xenophobia was coursing through tmany countries, including the US and Canada.

I should add I label my posts as ‘Public’ on Facebook, because I don’t fear what other people may say, and I enjoy engaging with the occasional stranger who makes a comment about something I’ve shared, and quite often gain new followers this way. Only rarely does somebody like the hater today crop up. I had an internal debate, and a public one with a few friends on the thread about the bigot, as to whether I would leave up his vile pronouncements, or delete them. In the end, I blocked him, because it became clear he just wanted to fight with me and others on the thread, but I did leave up his remarks, and our rebuttals, as a record of one person’s mindset, and our collective response, in dedication and memoriam to all people suffering in war, especially civilians, non-combatants, who are suffering right now so much, fleeing perilous devastation at home. Thanks to all friends and new people who read the original Facebook post, and this blog post, which is sort of meta to the first. The funny thing is, had I thought of it Thursday night, I might’ve blogged about the couple, and drawn a lot of that traffic to my sites, but I seized on it for Facebook, and am really very glad I did.

Also, please note that friends and readers who want to, may donate to a fund organized by the couple. The money they donated of their own, plus funds from friends and family who followed their directive and contributed have mustered more than $17,000, when $27,000 is needed to settle and shelter a family of four in Toronto for one year. You may follow this link, then look for the drop down menu where it says, “Select a designation for your gift,” and look for “Samantha Jackson & Farzin Yousefian.” I just donated.

Read more

Appreciating Ruth Gruber’s Lifetime of Humanitarian Activism and Photojournalism, at the JCC til Feb 25

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Ruth at JCC, Dec 9, 2014Kyle, Ewan, and I had a great time last night at the opening reception for an exhibit of Ruth Gruber’s photojournalism at the JCC. This is essentially the same exhibit that was mounted in 2012 at the International Center of Photography, the year that Ruth was awarded the ICP’s Infinity Award. If you’re unfamiliar with Ruth’s work, this show is a great way to begin. If you’re not in NYC to go see it, this link will lead you to many of the images. If you’re not familiar with her remarkable career, here’s a primer:

Born in 1911 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Ruth was always precocious. She received her B.A. from NYU at age sixteen; an M.A. in German language and literature from the University of Wisconsin at eighteen; and at twenty was offered a fellowship to participate in an exchange program at the University of Cologne. Early in her studies there, in 1931, she was asked by a professor if she would consider reading the work of Virginia Woolf, and writing a doctoral thesis about her. I’ve imagined that Ruth’s professors must have realized they had this bright female student in their midst, a reader of English and German who could tackle the Englishwoman’s books and write about them, asking themselves when they might again have such an opportunity, especially with the inter-war years—which they turned out to be—increasingly fraught by international peril? Ruth demurred—she had not yet read Woolf’s work, she could afford to be in Cologne only one year, her parents would not let her stay longer, the work would surely take more than a year—but soon, though she hadn’t read any of Woolf’s books when the professors asked her, she said, “I’ll try.” Taping up a picture of Woolf in her room, she undertook to read all of Woolf’s books then published, pondering their meaning and the significance of Woolf’s creative enterprise.

Despite the notoriety that her youthful doctorate brought her (she was heralded in the NY Times as the “World’s Youngest Ph.D.”), the Depression was in full swing and Ruth found little work upon her return to the States. She continued traveling and trying her hand at journalism and photography. In 1935, she was delighted when the thesis on Woolf was published as a book in Germany by the Tauchnitz Press, which had a list of English-language titles, including Woolf’s The Waves. Ruth sent a copy of her thesis to Woolf in London, thus beginning a lengthy correspondence between the two women that culminated in Ruth paying a visit to Woolf at her Bloomsbury home in 1936 or ’37. For more on this period of Ruth’s life, including the meeting between the two women, you can also read my post, Virginia Woolf and Ruth Gruber, Driven to Create as Women her on this blog.

After her experiences in Germany, she won a Fulbright scholarship, which included attending a rally at which Hitler spoke, where the foreign students were seated very near him, she devoted an extended period of independent study to the examination of “women under democracy, fascism, and communism.” She became the first Western journalist to tour the Soviet Arctic, and in 1937 published her second book, I Went to the Soviet Arctic, which she parlayed in to a new career as a public lecturer. In 1940, Ruth continued her association with the peoples of the polar regions when she became a member of the FDR administration, under Interior Secretary Harold Ickes who named her his special field representative for the territory of Alaska. She is doubtless one of the Roosevelt administration’s eldest surviving staffers. She worked for the government off and on during and immediately after WWII, leaving at times to work as a foreign correspondent for the New York Post and the Herald Tribune. In 1944, Ickes assigned Ruth a mission she urged him to give her, that of escorting nearly 1,000 WWII survivors from Naples, Italy, on the Henry Gibbins, a ship that also carried wounded American troops back to the US. In 1947, she was working as a foreign correspondent when she covered the fate of the Exodus ship, and chased its thousands of stateless passengers all over the Mediterranean and central Europe the summer of that year.

To read more about Ruth Gruber’s lifetime of humanitarian activism I recommend any of the six books I published with her, five of which are currently available in new editions from Open Road Integrated Media, whose executives Jane Friedman and Philip Rappaport were also on hand at the JCC. The titles I published with Ruth are 1) Exodus 1947: The Ship that Launched a Nation, Introduction by Eleanor Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook; 2) Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 WWII Refugees and How They Came to America, which was adapted for a TV movie in 2000 (Foreword by Dava Sobel, author of Longitude, and Ruth’s niece); 3) Raquela: A Woman of Israel, winner of the Jewish Book Award in 1978 (Introduction by novelist Faye Kellerman); 4) Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent (also the title of a documentary on Ruth), Introduction by Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner; 5) Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel: My Journey from Alaska to Israel; and 6) Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman.

I have written about Ruth several times on this blog, posts that are all illustrated with photographs by Ruth or of her: 1) Ruth Gruber’s Photojournalism at Soho Photography; 2) My Friend Ruth Gruber, Pioneering Photojournalist; 3) Virginia Woolf and Ruth Gruber, Driven to Create as Women; 4) Celebrating Photojournalist & Author Ruth Gruber’s 102nd Birthday With Her; and 5) Marking Photojournalist Ruth Gruber’s 103rd Birthday. Below are photos I took at last night’s reception, and photos I’ve taken of her book jackets.

Read more