Streams

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's treatise on poetry and songwriting, Streams.

First published by Prentice-Hall in 1978, Hochman's approach to teaching is just as unconventional and revelatory today as it was forty years ago.

From the Introduction by Hochman: This is a personal book that I hope will be like a friend. In a simple way I want to tell you some thoughts that I have about writing poetry and songs, and share with you some warm-up exercises for writing that can be used to limber up the mind the same way that dancers limber before a performance. Writing has always been for me a necessary experience-- something that I feel compelled to do. If that feeling of wanting to write is inside of you--what I call the Necessary Angel wanting to speak--that writing can be a part of your life experience the way it is part of mine.

A spiritual successor to Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast

Turner Publishing is proud to present another heartfelt memoir from the early life of the novelist, poet, and activist, Sandra Hochman. Following Hochman's Loving Robert Lowell that revealed the details of her affair with one of America's greatest poets, Remembering Paris 1958-1960, A Memoir chronicles Sandra's years before meeting Lowell, her first teenaged love and subsequent tumultuous marriage to an internationally famous concert violinist at the age of 21, her life as an American expatriate, and finding her creative voice in the City of Lights in the middle of the 20th century.

Sandra Hochman seemingly knew everyone, and throughout her life, she captured those friends' likenesses in one-of-a-kind watercolors that now adorn the walls of her Manhattan apartment. Hochman's Portraits of Genius Friendsis a rare glimpse into the world of one of America's singular literary voices and reveals a life lived amongst some of the greatest artists of the 20th Century, including Pablo Picasso, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, Phillip Roth, Milos Forman, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Elie Wiesel, Leonard Bernstein, Allen Ginsburg, James Baldwin, and, believe it or not, many more.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Playing Tahoe.

First published by Wyndham Books in 1981, Hochman's fifth novel is an unsparing and no-holds-barred look at the music business through the eyes of a woman who bets it all.

From the Wyndham edition: At age forty she was Americas greatest pop lyricist. From rock and roll through new wave, Sylvia Lundholm and her composer-partner Nick Dimani made millions while creating the platinum records in which millions found the sound of their own longing and joy.

Set against the background of the rock and roll music business in New York City and the casinos and hotels and ski lifts of Lake Tahoe, Playing Tahoe captures that specific moment in Sylvia Lundholm's life when she recognized that love was the one song she could not write, and that only by breaking with the superhype celebrity of her career might she learn in the hands of her new lover.

Revson Cranwell was the male courtesan every woman wanted. He was cold, well-bred, indifferent. But he made her hot. She had everything else that money could buy. Now she wanted him. He was her song, her lover, her best friend. She would kill for him. But he would make that unnecessary.

In Tahoe, at Harrah's, where Dimani is performing, Sylvia and Dimani meet to create a last great album that will cover the world with his music. But as the tendrils of Dimani's music threaten to clutch Sylvia back into the world she is so desperate to leave, the clash between her passion for Revson and Dimani's desperation for Sylvia's poetry erupts into cold-blooded violence.

Playing Tahoe will give you insight into the world of rock and roll and big casinos. But above all it will teach you the games of a woman who, gambling for love, desperately wants to hold on to the richness of her own life.

Sandra Hochman has created a novel that explores the guts of a woman in the midst of a change, who will overturn the American Dream to follow a stranger, Revson, who is a new antihero of modern fiction.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Jogging.

First published by Putnam in 1979, Hochman's fourth novel is the story of a man always one step ahead of love.

From the Ballantine Books mass-market edition: Jerry Hess is a smooth millionaire in the priceless world of art. His life is fast and classy dinners on Monday, screenings on Wednesday, drinks on Friday. And sex-well, his wife Lillian, a brilliant lawyer, promises someday. So Jerry runs away. Step by step he crosses the landscape of his sexual fantasies. From the firm, youthful desires of Mary to the sophisticated, sinful wishes of Ursule to the liberating pleasures of Paris, the city where dreams come true, Jerry must choose between a new future with a new woman or the life he left behind.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Happiness Is Too Much Trouble.

First published by Putnam in 1976, Hochman's follow-up to Walking Papers is the story of a unique woman told by a unique voice in American literature.

From the Putman edition: Who took over where Louis B. Mayer left off? A new kind of woman: Lulu. Lulu Cartwright is a troublemaker on a pilgrimage to save souls. One morning she wakes up and finds that she has been named head of the world's largest film studio. This powerful job is hers by a freak of computerized technology and ironic justice. As Lulu describes herself, she is the "unbroken token." She is also wise, frightened, funny, and sexually vulnerable.

Throughout the novel we follow Lulu from her moment of triumph back into her thoughts and memories. We meet her old lovers, husbands; we meet her parents, her childhood friends, her child; but most important of all, we meet Dumbo--a hustler and a stud. We watch Dumbo change from an out-of-work extra into Lulus "wife" and finally into an entrepreneur in the foot business. Through Lulu s eyes we put together the puzzle of her love for Dumbo. Dumbo is alive with contradictions, devotions, and a desire to heal soles. Dumbo, as perceived by Lulu, is the new hero, a stud-savior.

We also enter, with Lulu, through the computerized portals of the new Hollywood. We encounter the movieland of executives who never see films, the Hollywood of consultants, accountants, and frightened corporation men who have to deliver image and product in order to satisfy stockholders. On the way to the top, Lulu Cartwright finds herself in bed with Machiavellis, losers, and vibrators. Lulu is the kind of woman who manages to change the system, not merely be victimized by it.

Happiness Is Too Much Trouble is the story, past and present, of a woman who is finally, and against all odds, a winner. Lulu, by an accident of history, is forced to give up happiness and settle instead for fame, fortune, power. What makes her different is that she loves every minute of it. And so will you.

Turner Publishing is proud to present a new edition of Sandra Hochman's, Endangered Species.

First published by Putnam in 1977, Hochman's third novel is the story of Kathy Kahn's tireless search for love and purpose through business ventures, poetry, activism, and doomed love affairs. Hochman's experimental and frenetic novel mirrors the soul's search for comedy in tragedy and meaning in the meaningless.

Turner Publishing proudly presents the first of three new literary works by Sandra Hochman, author of Walking Papers.

When asked in 1976 by a reporter from People Magazine if her first two novels were autobiographical, Sandra Hochman replied, "My real life is much more fabulous than the books. One day I plan to write about it--men, Paris and women's liberation. It will probably be called Unreal Life."

Hochman first met Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Robert Lowell in 1961 at the Russian Tea Room in New York. She was to interview him for Encounter magazine. Hochman was twenty-five and had recently returned from Paris where she had lived with her husband for four years. They were now separated. Lowell was forty-three with plans to leave his wife. Hochman remembers it as the day that changed her life. The two poets fell in love instantly, and before the night was over, they had vowed to stay together forever. In Hochman's first literary work in almost forty years, she writes in startling detail about the torrid and ultimately doomed affair that would follow.

PRAISE FOR LOVING ROBERT LOWELL & SANDRA HOCHMAN

"Poet, documentarian, and novelist (Playing Tahoe) Hochman shares the riveting details of her affair with Pulitzer-winning poet Robert Lowell in this intoxicating slice of memoir. In 1961, both poets were leaving failing marriages when they met at the Russian Tea Room in New York City. In Hochman’s own words, “It was as if a bolt of lightning had hit him and me at the same time.” The two fell madly in love and embarked on a passionate relationship that included impromptu poetry readings on the Brooklyn Bridge and elbow rubbing with the literati. Before long, the pair were talking about marriage. Life seemed idyllic until a disastrous dinner with Lowell’s friends, literary power couple Barbara and Jason Epstein, followed by an accusation-filled exchange with a friend of Hochman’s. A joyous engagement party turned violent unearthed a secret that ended Hochman and Lowell’s romance. Hochman’s narrative is punctuated with moving poems written by her at the time and a transcript of an insightful letter Lowell wrote on being a conscientious objector. She superbly captures Lowell’s effusive personality, which is palpable throughout this engaging glimpse into the private life of a famed poet."

―Publisher's Weekly

“In 1972 Sandra Hochman shocked the literary world with her novel Walking Papers. I was dizzy with excitement about her talent. I not only helped her publish the book but wrote for her a blurb on the cover, the only one I’ve ever written, comparing her to Kafka and Saul Bellow on the book jacket. Her originality is repeated again in this memoir on her love affair of Robert Lowell where each scene spins off on its sometime comic course. She’s one of the greatest American writers and has fulfilled the promise I saw in Walking Papers.”

―Phillip Roth

Ever since Amanda could remember, she wanted to be a magician like her uncle Bill. When he came to New York to attend the magic convention, she went with him to the Commodore Hotel and watched while professional magicians from all over the world performed their newest and most exciting tricks. The most thrilling moment of all came when Perry the Magnificent asked Amanda to help him perform a trick on stage, and she took her first step toward her future career.