The Bloody Marys made him do it!

And John Batchelor has the best radio program on the air. m/r



Voice of Experience | The Weekly Standard

Philip Terzian, literary chauffeur

Philip Terzian

December 8, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 13

I've lately had the pleasure of being interviewed on John Batchelor’s cerebral radio program, which originates in New York but is heard all over the country. Since I am in Washington, and not New York, I speak to Mr. Batchelor by telephone—which means that his millions of listeners hear but do not see the person identified as “Philip Terzian.” I may well be the only one of his guests who thinks about such things, but there’s a reason.

Almost exactly 40 years ago, when I was employed as a baby editor at another magazine in Washington, its small but ambitious book division reprinted a collection of short stories by Mordecai Richler (1931-2001) entitled The Street (1975). Richler, the Jewish-Canadian novelist and essayist, was then at the height of his renown, largely based on the 1974 movie version of his 1959 novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. 

There was a very modest author’s tour—a series of radio and television interviews in Washington and Baltimore—and it was my job to collect Richler at his hotel and ferry him from venue to venue in my Fiat. So naïve was I at the time that it never occurred to me afterwards to seek reimbursement for gas and mileage, or for the lunch I underwrote, during our literary journey. But I was interested to spend a day in the company of a famous novelist, and curious about the rituals of TV and radio interviews.

Since our first appointment was in Baltimore, I collected Richler at the Madison Hotel in Washington very nearly at dawn. He looked like the proverbial unmade bed:…

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