On a beautiful summer night, the full front of the house at Max and Benny’s was uncharacteristically quiet between seven and eight as they listened to author Scott Turow discuss his new book Testimony and other matters of interest. Testimony is set in Bosnia and The Hague, far from Turow’s familiar Kindle County. It delves into the mysterious world of the Roma people, and the inner workings of the U.N.’s International Court of Justice. The author visited both Bosnia and the Netherlands to do his research.
During the q and a, Ross Steinberg, a student of creative writing at Northwestern, asked him how a writer balances the demands of the craft with the realities of other things going on in one’s life. Turow, prolific and popular in writing, while also achieving great success in the field of law, said that discipline in writing was essential. “A writer has to get his tush in his chair each day, even it’s only for a half hour, and write.”
After the presentation, I talked to some of the folks who were there. Shelly Spak liked “the author’s subject matter and the way he established an immediate rapport with the audience.” Tony Fernandez found Turow’s “frank discussion of the Roma and the International Court of Justice especially interesting to the layman. I learned a lot this evening.”
I came away from the evening with a good feeling, observing that books and the literary world are still important in the lives of so many people.
A LOVELY SUMMER EVENING WITH SCOTT TUROW
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