Don't Look Back: A Memoir - Hardcover

O'Connor, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559210982 ISBN 13: 9781559210980

Publisher: Moyer Bell, 1993

Synopsis

An important New York City editor tells anecdotes--some hilarious, some poignant--from a thirty-five-year career involving encounters with Marlene Dietrich, Ayn Rand, Andrew Greeley, John Simon, and other luminaries.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

An often moving collection of colophon-length musings and amusements by New York paperback-editor/anthologist/poet O'Connor (former editor-in-chief of Popular Library, Washington Square Press, and Pinnacle Books). Though O'Connor writes about his love of Broadway musicals, plays, and ballet, his main interest lies in recounting meetings with famed authors and publishing folk; his dodges for slipping favorite books into print; his skiing prowess on nitroglycerin pills; his feeble mastery of bridge by which he won notices in a tournament presided over by Ely Culbertson; and tales about his enormous infatuation with New York. He comes from Braddock, Pennsylvania, where, he says, few people could spell Petrouchka, much less hum it. While O'Connor worked as an assistant agent at MCA, a dramatic rush call came in from actor/client Darren McGavin for a baby-sitter. Stumped, O'Connor phoned Mr. and Mrs. Boris Karloff, who lived in McGavin's building, begging them to go down to the McGavins' room. McGavin's face was ``a sight to behold,'' said Mrs. McGavin, when Darren opened his door and the player of the Frankenstein monster introduced himself as the evening's baby sitter for the actor's two little daughters. Then we have O'Connor prepping himself on the entire works of Ayn Rand when NAL made him her editor, and her smiling question over dinner if he'd not once called her ``the writer of the best juveniles in America?'' The odyssey of O'Connor getting E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels into reprint by falsely announcing that Masterpiece Theatre would be filming them is also not to be missed. Great fun. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of vignettes rings with the joie de vivre of someone who finds life the ultimate adventure. The 66-year-old O'Connor, who has had a career as an editor at Washington Square Press, Pinnacle and Popular Library, and as a cultural critic for Variety and on radio and TV (he's now a ski instructor in Vermont), originally broadcast these essays on WBAI Radio in New York City. We witness the 16-year-old O'Connor, from Braddock, Pa., on his first trip to Manhattan and how he defied the Legion of Decency (and his family) to see Gypsy Rose Lee on Broadway. We learn how Robert Patrick O'Connor was turned into plain Patrick O'Connor by that "magnificent contraption" known as Marlene Dietrich. We also meet his boss, William S. Paley, head of CBS which owned Popular Library, who instantly transforms him from an alledged pornographer into an erudite art critic. In a hilarious episode, O'Connor explains how this came about: Paley disarmed his executives at a meeting called to criticize O'Connor for publishing a collection of "dirty" paintings by asking: "Mr. O'Connor, do you suppose you could meet me for lunch in SoHo and we could go to the gallery and buy some of those originals for the Museum of Modern Art?" Along the way, we come across an unlikely cast featuring the likes of Ayn Rand, Boris Karloff, Ray Charles, Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh and Andy Warhol in this spicy read that captures the astonishment of a small-town boy who wanted to make it in the big city, and did.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Moyer Bell
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1559210982
• ISBN 13: 9781559210980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 171