Scott Turow was the assistant U.S. attorney leading the Operation Greylord prosecution of Circuit Judge Reginald Holzer in 1986. He was making headlines. He was on the 10 p.m. news. He wasn`t sleeping.
”I remember lying in the bed in the late night or early morning during the Holzer trial,” says Turow, now 38. ”It was 5 in the morning and I was going through a fairly typical phenomenon for me of early-morning
sleeplessness. `I want you to quit,` my wife said to me. `Finish the trial and quit.`
”She said, `When you get ready to leave, at least give yourself some time. Take three months to write. Try to finish this book you`ve been working on.` ”
Sitting in a sunny, white-walled office festooned with family photographs and children`s artwork, his desk cluttered with books, yellow legal pads, a half-empty Diet Pepsi and a gavel inscribed ”Operation Greylord, Oct. 1983, Grand Jury,” Turow smiles while recalling the exchange.
He should. Now a criminal defense lawyer and non-equity partner at Sonnenschein Carlin Nath & Rosenthal, one of the city`s biggest law firms, Turow has been on a fast track in his legal career. The fast track is about to become dual-lane.
In what may rate as one of the most lucrative uses of commuter time, Turow began penning a novel in a spiral notebook six years ago while riding the Chicago & North Western from the North Shore. The result, ”Presumed Innocent” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18.95), will be published officially July 15. It is already in bookstores across the country, however, and has all the markings of one of the hottest books of the year.
”It`s going to be huge,” predicts Pat Peterson, general manager of the Barbara`s Bookstores, a haven for book lovers on the Near North Side. ”It`s been a real event in publishing for the last nine months. When there`s a lot of pre-publication hoopla, I usually back away. This time the hoopla is warranted. It`s a novel everybody can read. I wanted someone to discuss it with. If I`m wrong on this, I shouldn`t have been in the book business for 15 years.”
The book has been available at Kroch`s & Brentano`s for one week and is already its best seller in fiction, according to William Rickman, vice president of the chain.
”In any other year,” wrote Tribune literary critic John Blades, ”a
(Saul) Bellow novel would monopolize most of the attention, not just here but everywhere. This season, however, the great gray eminence faces serious competition from Scott Turow.” (Bellow currently has a new book on the market.)
Bidding wars
Turow`s manuscript was the subject of a bidding contest for hardcover rights last October, only weeks after he had submitted it to his fast-talking New York agent, Gail Hochman. Farrar paid a $200,000 advance, the most the publisher of quality books had ever paid for a first novel. After the New York sale, Turow`s manuscript popped up in Los Angeles, where it incited a frenzied film-rights auction, covered in detail by the New York Times and won ultimately by director Sydney Pollack for $1 million.
The book has been selected by the Literary Guild as a main selection and has been sold to publishers in 13 countries. The bidding for paperback rights will begin at $670,000.
The reason for pre-publication enthusiasm, agent Hochman says, is the book`s combination of quality writing and commercial appeal.
”It`s intelligent and very involving,” she says of the book. ”The plot is sophisticated; the story is gripping; the characters are well-drawn–which to me is a sign of quality.” The reader has a real feeling of authenticity, she notes, because the story is ”the culmination of what he knows best and cares about the most.”
As the manuscript made news each step of the way in the publishing world, reporters in the mainstream press began to scent a potential blockbuster. Already interviewed by publications ranging from The National Law Journal to People Magazine, Turow is scheduled to appear on NBC-TV`s ”Today” show July 20 to kick off a 14-city North American book tour.
”I`ve told Scott I`m going to start billing him for the time I spend being interviewed,” jokes Julian Solotorovsky, a lawyer with Finley, Kumble and Wagner and a Turow friend from the day when they began to work in the U.S. attorney`s office.
Mild-mannered lawyer
The man in the center of this competitive rush is boyish-looking and surprisingly mild-mannered, given his knack for being associated with high-profile cases. Seven years ago, just 15 months after graduation from Harvard Law School, Turow was part of the team that prosecuted Illinois Atty. Gen. William J. Scott for tax fraud.
Known as an intense, extraordinarily well-prepared trial lawyer who
”just keeps boring in” on witnesses during cross-examination, he is of middling height, by his own calculation overweight and blessed with a voice as rich and smooth as melted chocolate.
His office on the 81st floor of Sears Tower is more cozy than ostentatious. He follows the Cubs; if there`s time, he`s a golfer; he has occasionally backslid on his determination to quit smoking cigarettes.
Although wife Annette Turow and friend Solotorovsky say they see no similarity between Turow and his ”Presumed Innocent” hero, Rusty Sabich, casual observers may see reflections of Turow in Sabich`s professional ambition, intense joy in family life and pleasure in the peaceful haven of his suburban home.
Rusty Sabich is a chief deputy prosecutor in a large, unnamed Midwestern city 400 miles from Detroit. In the final weeks of his boss` tight re-election campaign, Sabich assumes responsibility for the investigation of the murder of Carolyn Polhemus, an assistant prosecutor with whom Sabich has had an adulterous affair. When his boss loses the election, Sabich finds himself accused of the murder.
Art imitates life?
The author disclaims any kinship to his creation except ”I think to some extent Rusty`s got my voice. We talk a lot alike.” He adds unprompted, ”I didn`t have that affair.”
If he is pleased with the positive critical reaction thus far to his book, he is far more ambivalant about the money and the fame. ”Presumed Innocent” was written less for cash in the bank–Turow`s compensation at Sonnenschein reportedly reaches into six figures–than to prove to himself he could succeed in a field he once abandoned because he felt he had failed.
”Maybe it was obstinancy,” he explains about why he continues to write in odd moments of a busy, happy life–late at night, while shaving, when the children are out. ”Feeling I was beaten, I was, nevertheless, unwilling to give up.”
Twelve years ago, Turow left a nascent literary career and a post as a creative-writing lecturer at Stanford University, despondent because a book on which had been working for several years was rejected.
The son of a North Shore physician and his writer wife, Turow had aimed at a writing career while attending New Trier High School and Amherst College in Massachusetts. At Stanford, after his marriage, he decided there was no future in literature.
Law-school hit
He went to Harvard University Law School in 1975. It was then, after abandoning hope of a literary career, that a publishing company gave him a $1,000 advance to write his experiences as a first-year Harvard Law student. Published in 1977, his slim, diary-like account, titled ”One L: An Inside Account of Life in the First Year at Harvard Law School,” became a kind of underground hit with lawyers or would-be lawyers. It is still available in paperback from Penguin Books ($6.95).
”There really is a generation of lawyers who`ve been influenced by Scott,” says Duane Quaini, co-chairman of the litigation and business practice regulation group at Sonnenschein.
Not only was ”One L” well-received by those considering the law, but it also still is remembered by New York editors. Hochman credits Turow`s reputation from that non-fiction book for opening publishing doors for his manuscript last fall.
The surprising success of ”One L,” however, ”didn`t count in my own internal scoreboard,” Turow insists. ”My desire was to be a novelist, a writer of fiction.”
Until ”three or four years ago” he felt like an interloper as a lawyer. ”I`d spent so many years defining myself as a writer that I really didn`t have any sense of identity as a lawyer. I really felt I was faking it. Somewhere along the way that changed; somewhere along the line I went through this kind of shift of identity. People ask me what I do. I certainly answer I am a lawyer. I don`t say I`m a writer. I find that kind of a grandiose claim for somebody who spends 60 hours a week doing something else.”
All work
It was the number of hours and the intensity of his law career, particularly during the Holzer trial, that concerned Annette.
”He was totally, physically a wreck,” she says about urging him to write, to take a break. ”I was afraid he`d become ill.”
In July of last year, Turow left the U.S. attorney`s office and gave himself three months to complete his writing project before starting his new job. Working at the computer in his basement next to his wife`s art studio, he wrote like the wind. The story, plot and characters were so well-formed in his mind that ”it was like taking dictation,” he says.
”I sent the book to New York on the 12th of September,” he says, ”and I started here on the 29th. The reason I gave myself that time in between was because I wanted to paint the porch and make sure I had something to show for my three months off in the event the book didn`t get published.”
Reaction to the book came quickly–and positively.
He has tried to take the swift chain of events in stride, continuing to catch the same morning commuter train and maintain the same workload. Turow is trying to establish himself as a defense lawyer, a new and demanding assignment, especially in a large firm where some may resent his instant partnership, his plum cases and now his high-profile after-hours career.
Family first
At the same time, the Turows just had their third child last month. Eve joins older sister Rachel, 7, and brother Gabriel, 4, in the family`s north suburban home. Both parents are determined not to let the temporary glare of the spotlight demolish the family`s stability and serenity, key elements in Turow`s current success.
”Actually, it`s negative,” says Annette Turow, cuddling Eve on her shoulder, when asked about the effects on the family of the publicity and the book. An artist whose paintings are sold through the Jan Cicero gallery, she says: ”It`s the culmination of a lifetime goal for Scott and it`s a fantastic opportunity. Most people who say they are artists have nothing to show at the end of their lives. Having financial security is nice for our children. But I hope it doesn`t change our lives.”
The couple have tried to hold down disruption by limiting visits by reporters and photographers to their home.
”So far it hasn`t changed our lives at all,” insists Turow, ”and we`re hellbound and determined it`s not going to. Because, to tell you the truth, I`ve been very satisfied. As a person I was not especially happy in my late teens and early 20s. My marriage and the birth of my children are the best things that have happened to me in my life, and they remain central. Emotionally, as grateful as I am for the success of this book, the conception of Scott Turow, successful writer, or even Scott Turow, successful lawyer, does not displace home and family as the center of my emotional life.”
”It`s hard on the family,” admits Solotorovsky. ”It`s got to be hard with people calling and the demands on his time. That`s not easy for young children to understand. But it won`t last long and life will go back to normal.”
aWorst-case scenario
What if the unimaginable happens? What if the book does not live up to its advance billing?
”I have not discussed that possibility with him,” says his friend. ”I can`t conceive of that happening. I would be shocked and amazed if it did. Actually, there are two different issues here. One, is it a good book? Two, will it be a blockbuster? The answer is, whatever happens it is still a good book.”
Whatever happens with ”Presumed Innocent,” however, there is no thought at this time of returning full-time to the literary life. Author Scott Turow is expected to continue as lawyer Scott Turow.
”I`ve lived with him while he was a writer,” explains Annette. ”It`s lonely. You need the stimulation of the real world or you eventually dry out. When you are an artist of any kind, it never leaves you. I remember sitting next to a musician on a bus one day and he remarked, `This bus idles in F.`
It`s just part of the way you are.”
So it seems. Despite his current success, his crushing round of obligations, Scott Turow already is at work on another book.
”I`m not talking about the new book,” he says. ”But it is about lawyers.” —
