Word: turow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Things Are, involved, among other complications, a rent strike. "I realized that I knew nothing about the legal complexities of such an act," he says. "I also noticed that most of my friends, the people I had come to feel closest to at Stanford, were lawyers." As a lark, Turow decided to take the Law School Admission Test; he came back from the exam convinced he had made a fool of himself. In fact, he scored well enough to gain admission to Harvard and Yale law schools. He submitted The Way Things Are to some publishers and, as he expected...
...story could easily have ended here, and in a not very original way: another aspiring artist surrenders to the exigencies of the real world. But Turow's arrival at Harvard came with one of those little anomalies that inspire curious readers to turn the page. While explaining to his agent his decision to abandon literature, Turow had mentioned the possibility of someone's doing a nonfiction book about the experiences of first-year law students. He received a $4,000 contract to do just that. So he went to Harvard not only to study law but also, as he says...
After his grueling first nine months, Turow spent 14 equally grueling weeks in the summer turning his diaries into narrative form. One L was published just before his final year at Harvard. Some of his professors and classmates did not like the book -- and particularly their thinly disguised appearances in it -- but most reviewers were ecstatic. One L went on to sell some 40,000 copies in hardback and to become an underground, pass-along classic among law students. Turow confesses himself thrilled by "my first taste of literary success," but he was not swayed from the new path...
...offer came to join the U.S. attorney's staff in Chicago, he and Annette jumped at it. "I thought it was the best job imaginable, that it had the power to help shape the community." The return to their native city marked an important rite of passage for the Turows, a sense that the onetime prodigal children had returned and were prepared to become adults. "I had been taught that all writers have to find their roots," Turow says. "Well, I found mine in the upper-middle class...
...that point he was not really a writer anymore but a full-time lawyer. The eight years he spent as a deputy U.S. prosecutor included Operation Greylord, a widespread crackdown and sting operation that nabbed corrupt judges and other scoundrels in the Illinois legal system. Turow successfully prosecuted, among others, a state attorney general and a circuit-court judge...