Todd McCarthy

Several very talented people took time out of their busy schedules to provide Everything Is an Afterthought and Conversations with Clint with some lovely advance praise. We were able to use all of the blurbs--with the exception of one, which unfortunately arrived just a tad too late.

My apologies to Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter, who had this to say about Conversations with Clint:

"Paul Nelson's resurrected 'lost' interviews represent deep-dish Clint. Nelson recognized the magnitude of the actor-director's talents earlier than most--Eastwood had only made it up to Sudden Impact in 1983 by the time of the final interview--and they clearly had an easy rapport. The result sees the star opening up on his early struggles, how he learned from observing on Rawhide, his close collaborations with Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, money, politics, celebrity, and why he prefers early Bergman and Kurosawa to their later films. Clint has given many interviews, but this is one of his best, definitely of great interest to anyone who takes his work seriously."

Thanks, Todd.

Artist/Thief

Writing about "Dylan's Latest Brush with Plagiarism" in this article from the Boston Examiner, William Routhier opens with the legendary story about the young singer-songwriter swiping Paul Nelson and Jon Pankake's choice folk records.

Book Trailer

Jeff Wong, who's responsible for the terrific illustrations of Paul Nelson that grace the covers of both of my books, demonstrated that he's just as talented in the video medium and put together this nifty book trailer for Conversations with Clint.

Los Angeles Review of Books

Today's lead article in the Los Angeles Review of Books features Jonathan Lethem's foreword to Conversations with Clint, along with two excerpts from Paul Nelson's interviews with Clint Eastwood.

Who could ask for a better shared byline?

LARB

While not entirely correct, this preview of forthcoming articles from the Los Angeles Review of Books website still looks nice:

Rumor has it that the article itself will be out tomorrow...

The Strand

I first learned about the Strand Bookstore and its "18 miles of books" by way of its ads back in the Seventies when, living in Salt Lake City, my main connection to NYC was a subscription to The Village Voice. In 2004, when I began dating Deborah, often commuting to New York on the weekends, the Strand was the first bookstore she took me to. And when I interviewed Michael Seidenberg, Paul Nelson's close friend, back in 2006 when I began writing Everything Is an Afterthought, he told me this story about moving Paul into his apartment at 400 East Seventy-Fourth Street on the Upper East Side:

Moved him into the apartment that he lived in up until the end, which was a five-story walkup. We had to take tons of trips. All Paul’s books were in Strand bags. Hundreds and hundreds of Strand bags, filled with books. The kind of amount that you feel you’ll never be done.

Several years before that, when Paul's son Mark came to visit him in 1985 and someone snapped a photo to commemorate the event, a Strand bag can be seen in the background:

It's fitting, then, that the first official event for Everything Is an Afterthought should be at--you guessed it--the Strand. On Wednesday, November 9, at 7 PM in the Rare Book Room on the third floor, Paul's old friend and SiriusXM Radio host Dave Marsh will be joining me on the Strand stage. You can read more about it by clicking here.

I hope you can join us.

Elvis Mitchell

This just in from film critic Elvis Mitchell, host of KCRW's The Treatment:

“I found that Conversations with Clint is invaluable reading, not just because it’s a uniquely in-depth series of interviews with someone who always had a sense of himself as an enduring figure. It also takes us inside the head of Paul Nelson—the interviewer himself—whose states of mind complete the story. The best interviews have always been two-sided—a conversation—and Conversations is just that: a compelling look at an extended eyeball-to-eyeball encounter, complete with blinks and flinches.”

ASCAP Deems Taylor Award

From Everything Is an Afterthought, after Paul Nelson resigns from Rolling Stone:

Paul was gone, his office vacated. “Somebody else had to clean it up,” [David] McGee says. “I do remember somebody in there boxing up the records.” Among what was left behind, the Deems Taylor Award presented to Paul by ASCAP in 1979 “in recognition of the excellence of his articles” published in Rolling Stone (for “Rod Stewart Under Siege” in particular). The plaque eventually found its way back to him.

Thanks to Scott Woods at rockcritics.com for unearthing the above page from Billboard's July 28, 1979, issue. (Click on either image to view larger versions.)

Turner Classic Movies

Ask anybody in my family -- my wife Debbie, my stepdaughter Laura, or her dog Mysti the four-legged muse -- and they'll confirm that my favorite TV station by far is Turner Classic Movies. So it's a big deal for me that today Conversations with Clint showed up as one of the top news stories on TCM's Movie News page.

History of New York

Paul Nelson is significantly mentioned in this entry of Patell and Waterman's History of New York--as are my two upcoming books. Thanks to John Mark Boling at Continuum Books for making this happen.