Word: turow
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...surely there must be a potential class action on behalf of writers, charging Turow with monopolistic practices over the pool of money available for new books. Presumed Innocent racked up several records. Farrar, Straus & Giroux paid Turow $200,000, the most the publisher had ever advanced for a first novel. A paperback sale of $3 million followed, another first-novel first. Then came a million dollars more from Hollywood, and royalties from the 18 foreign-language editions of the novel are still rolling in. Neither Turow nor FS&G will disclose the financial arrangements surrounding The Burden of Proof; what...
...making a federal case out of Turow's success may not be the best way to understand it or the man behind it. He is indisputably a successful Chicago attorney, with a billable rate of $220 an hour, dedicated to the system that rewards him. On the other hand, he has made his mark as an author by dramatizing the limits of legalisms. Both Presumed Innocent and The Burden of Proof weave and coil intricately around the same point: without the law, civilized life is impossible; with the law, civilized life is only nearly impossible...
...does Scott do both? How can he seek justice for those who pay for his services and continue to turn out best-selling fiction about the frailties of the law? Turow does not see the question as especially difficult: "In functional terms, the law practice always comes first. When my clients call, I can interrupt my writing...
...says this in his 77th-floor office in the world's tallest building, Chicago's Sears Tower, where he is a partner in the 300-awyer firm of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal. This well-appointed, bustling termitarium does not seem the natural habitat of a writer, but Turow blends in easily. He carries a suitably stuffed and scuffed briefcase; he wears dark suits and serious, lace-up lawyer shoes. (Occasionally some modest stripes on his white shirts will betray a whiff of bohemian raffishness.) His accent in no way distinguishes his speech from that heard in the hallways or elevators...
This impression is hardly original; jails are full of people convinced that the legal system has misunderstood them. What sets Turow's opinion apart from run-of-the-mill sour grapes is what he has made of it: serious fictional portraits of the present moment, when moral authority is collapsing and the law has become, for better and worse, the sole surviving arena for definitions of acceptable behavior. Disputes that once might have been resolved by fisticuffs or a few intense minutes in the confessional or private negotiations between squabbling clans now tend to wind up as lawsuits...