Sunday, 5 June 2011

News on Kevin Avery's book Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood

I had the pleasure of another email today from Kevin. It was back in September of 2010 that Kevin first contacted me regarding this very special book. Since then, Kevin has been true to his word in keeping The Clint Eastwood Archive bang up to date with any news.I am pleased to report that there is now an official release date of September 22nd 2011.

Kevin's book is now available for order on Amazon, with a presale discount, so please check out the links below.Conversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983 AMAZON USConversations with Clint: Paul Nelson's Lost Interviews with Clint Eastwood, 1979-1983 AMAZON UKEverything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson [Hardcover] AMAZON USEverything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson [Hardcover] AMAZON UK

While this is Kevin's 2nd book, his first Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, is due out shortly after on November 1st. This will also contain a chapter devoted to his relationship with Clint Eastwood, as well as other Eastwood-related material throughout.Again, this too is available for order with a pre order discount.Clint Eastwood has forged a remarkable career as a movie star, director, producer, and composer. These newly discovered conversations with legendary journalist Paul Nelson return us to a point when, still acting in other people’s films, Eastwood was honing his directorial craft on a series of inexpensive films that he brought in under budget and ahead of schedule. Operating largely beneath the critical radar, he made his movies swiftly and inexpensively. Few of his critics then could have predicted that Eastwood the actor and director would ever be taken as seriously as he is today. But Paul Nelson did. The interviews were conducted from 1979 through 1983. Eastwood talks openly and without illusions about his early career as an actor, old Hollywood, and his formative years as a director, his influence and what he learned along the way as an actor—lessons that helped him become the director he is today. Conversations with Clint provides a fresh and vivid perspective on the life and work of this most American of movie icons.

Kevin Avery’s writing has appeared in publications as diverse as Mississippi Review, Penthouse, Weber Studies, and Salt Lake magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and stepdaughter. His first book, Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson, is published by Fantagraphics Books.Jonathan Lethem is one of the most acclaimed American novelists of his generation. His books include Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, and Chronic City. His essays about James Brown and Bob Dylan have appeared in Rolling Stone. He lives in Claremont, California. Advance Praise for Conversations With Clint“Kevin Avery has performed a great service to film lovers by bringing to light Paul Nelson’s remarkable interviews with Clint Eastwood. Nelson was an appreciator of Eastwood in the seventies, before he had won wide critical recognition. In these fascinating and wide-ranging conversations, the actor-director discusses with complete candor both the art of his films and the realities of filmmaking in Hollywood.”Andrew Sarris, Author of Notes on the Auteur Theory“This book is a miracle. It reads so naturally—a testament to Kevin Avery’s editorial skill, and his own devotional attention to Paul’s voice—that you might suppose it’s an example of something. But it’s not. There aren’t books like this, because I doubt any other interviewer could ever have this sort of effect on a human being as (justifiably) well-defended as Clint Eastwood. (For comparison, see Lester Bangs, Paul’s friend, jousting with Lou Reed.) Here, you feel the seduction of good conversation, of genuine friendship, overwriting the task at hand for both participants.”From the foreword by Jonathan Lethem

Fantagraphics is proud to announce Everything Is an Afterthought: The Life and Writings of Paul Nelson. Author Kevin Avery spent four years researching and writing this unique anthology-biography. This book compiles Nelson’s best works and also provides a vivid account of his life. In the ’60s, Paul Nelson pioneered rock & roll criticism with a first-person style of writing later coined “New Journalism.” During a five-year detour at Mercury Records he signed the New York Dolls to their first recording contract, and then settled back down to music criticism at Rolling Stone. Through his writing, Nelson championed the early careers of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Rod Stewart, Neil Young, Warren Zevon, The Sex Pistols, and The Ramones.But in 1982, he walked away from it all. By the time Nelson died in his New York City apartment in 2006, everything he’d written had been relegated to back issues of old music magazines.

“My original idea for this book was simply to anthologize Paul Nelson’s best work so that today’s readers could discover, as I had in my youth, his elegant and brilliant writings,” explains author Kevin Avery. “But I soon realized that, in doing these pieces, Paul was ultimately telling his own story. And his story was so damn compelling it was impossible for me not to write about it." American journalist, biographer, and poet Nick Tosches wrote the foreword to this landmark work of cultural revival, which stands as a tribute to and collection of one of the unsung critical champions of popular music.