Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 30, 1992 TAG: 9201300215
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FROM UNKNOWN TO AN ICON
Novelist and lawyer Scott Turow spoke to a Virginia Tech creative-writing class Tuesday but spent his spare hours in Blacksburg preparing for a murder trial in Chicago.
AFTER 21 years as a struggling novelist, Scott Turow became a superstar overnight.
The book was "Presumed Innocent," a mystery set against the legal world so familiar to the 42-year-old Chicago writer and lawyer.
It was hailed by critics, scooped up by the reading public with sales topping 7 million in both hardback and paper and turned into a prestigious movie with box office star Harrison Ford in the lead.
"It was stunning to have that kind of commercial and critical success," Turow said Wednesday in Blacksburg.
"You have no right to expect that. I'm not sure I know of another story like this about a first novel from an unknown writer."
On Tuesday, Turow came to Blacksburg where he spoke at Virginia Tech that night and answered questions in Ed Falco's creative-writing class during the day.
However, his visit wasn't exactly a break. He spent his flying time working on a new novel. And he spent his spare hours in Blacksburg working on a Chicago court case; it concerns a man who is being prosecuted for murder even though someone else has confessed to the crime.
Turow describes himself as a hard-worker, a statement that his achievements leave beyond dispute.
He began his first novel at 17, studied creative writing at Stanford and almost became absorbed by academe.
"In the late '60s, I was very far left politically. When my friends announced they were going to law school, I found this an abhorrent decision."
He also found himself sliding into the life of an English professor and says his years as a young writer were ones of terrible failure.
"I was grappling with no particular destiny," he says. Long interested in the principles of the law, Turow took the law school aptitude tests almost on a lark. He was astonished by his score, and he and his wife decided he had no other choice but to try law school.
The result was not only a law degree from Harvard University but a well-regarded book about his first year there - "One L."
However, he regarded himself as a serious novelist and continued to write fiction in his hours away from his regular work as an assistant U.S. attorney in his hometown of Chicago.
"Presumed Innocent" was the product of all that writing on the commuter train.
The payoff was immense.
"My first book was unknown, and my second was an icon," Turow says.
When he was offered $1 million for the film rights, he put his artistic protectiveness aside.
"I had a pregnant wife, two children and a mortgage," he said. "If they turned it into confetti, I couldn't have said no."
By then, any problems Turow had in getting his fiction published were over. "Presumed Innocent" was followed by "The Burden of Proof," about a character in the first book whose wife has commited suicide.
At least 4 million copies have been sold, and it has been turned into a four-hour ABC miniseries airing Feb. 9 and 10. Among its impressive cast are Hector Elizondo, Brian Dennehy, Victoria Principal and Stephanie Powers. Turow likes both screen versions of his work, though he seems to favor the miniseries.
He is now working on another novel, one he says may be his most commercial yet: A lawyer is assigned to track down a missing partner and $9 million gone from a client's trust account.
Turow continues to practice law, though his success as a best-selling writer is enormous. "I like being a lawyer," he says. "I thought of taking a year off. It's no secret that my partners question the utility of my staying in private practice. I'm doing an increasing amount of pro bono work. But the flexible schedule and my affection for the other lawyers are the attractions."
Indeed, when you first see Scott Turow in his navy blazer and silk print tie, you think lawyer, not writer.
"Every lawyer has to find his or her roots, and I found mine in the middle class," says the doctor's son.
"Being in the mainstream was better for me than being wedged into an artistic way of life. It was more comfortable for me to be an oddball in the mainstream than in a bohemian atmosphere of true outsiders."
The mainstream these days is that of the celebrity, and it has brought Turow some pressures. But they're minor compared to those of the movie celebrities of his acquaintance.
"Harrison Ford and I were talking about the difference in name recognition. He pointed to his face and said, `This curse.' Literary superstardom in this country ain't much. It may get you good tables in certain restaurants. But I can still walk down the street and not be recognized."
The writer who has written one of the more successful mysteries of recent years says he reads few mysteries with the exception of those by Ruth Rendell and a few others. He mainly reads serious, contemporary fiction and classics he has missed, calling himself an eternal creative-writing graduate student.
Above all else, he values a good story.
"I believe in plot," he says. "If the reader isn't wondering what's going to happen next, something essential is missing."
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