Cullen, John 1942-

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CULLEN, John 1942-

PERSONAL:

Born 1942; married Valerie Martin; Education: University of Texas, Ph.D. (English literature).

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1540 Broadway, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10036.

CAREER:

Translator and writer.

WRITINGS:

(Translator) Susanna Tamaro, Follow Your Heart, Compass Press (Boston, MA), 1995.

(Translator) Adolf Holl, The Left Hand of God: A Biography of the Holy Spirit, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

(Translator) Christa Wolf, Medea: A Modern Reading, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 1998.

(Translator) Henning Boetius, The Phoenix: A Novel about the Hindenburg, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2001.

(Translator) Susanna Tamaro, Rispondimi, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave) Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2001.

(Translator) Yasmina Khadra, The Swallows of Kabul, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2004.

(Translator) Margaret Mazzantini, Don't Move, Nan A. Talese (New York, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

John Cullen received his Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Texas. He lives in upstate New York with his wife Valerie Martin. He has translated a number of books from Italian and French into English and is a coauthor.

Cullen's first work as a translator was published in 1995. Written by Susanna Tamaro, Follow Your Heart is an epistolary novel that tells the story of an old Italian widow and her estranged granddaughter living in America. It won the prestigious Premio Donna Cittadi Roma award. Cullen's next translated work is Adolf Holl's The Left Hand of God: A Biography of the Holy Spirit. Holl charts the role of the Holy Spirit from the New Testament all the way up through the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found the book to be "eloquently written, and equally well translated." Another Italian book Cullen translated is Christa Wolf's Medea: A Modern Retelling. In this work Wolf takes a mythological character generally looked down upon and shows her as a complex, compassionate and courageous feminist heroine. Cullen's next translation is Henning Boetius's The Phoenix: A Novel about the Hindenburg. This work, written by the son of a Hindenburg survivor, is a fictional story of a man reported dead after the crash of the Hindenburg. He takes on a new identity and becomes obsessed with answering the question of what went wrong. Cullen translated another novel written by Susanna Tamaro, Rispondimi. The book is three novellas set in Italy and, as described by a contributor for Kirkus Reviews, "connected by spiritual/religious themes of good and evil, love and redemption." Carol Haggas for Booklist called attention to Cullen's work, "Superbly translated from the Italian, with prose that blazes with mordant imagery."

Cullen's first work as coauthor is Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan, written with Henry Villard's great-granddaughter Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave. Villard was a railroad titan during the height of the Gilded Age, and this biography follows his life from meager beginnings as a German immigrant, to his work as a journalist covering the Lincoln-Douglass debates, and his eventual success as a newspaper man, owner of the Northern Pacific Railroad, and aid to Thomas Edison and the founding of General Electric. A reviewer for the Economist stated "His [Villard] story is worth telling and in this biography is told well." Robert Finn of Bookreporter said of de Borchgrave and Cullen, "They have a knack for striking off memorable character portraits of those, both famous and obscure, whose lives intersected with their subject's." W. Thomas White of Oregon Historical Quarterly remarked, "Villard is written in a lively style that makes this complex and important business leader's life accessible for general audiences as well as specialists." Hardy Green of Business Week said it was "smoothly written and insightful" and James Buchan of the New York Observer said it was "as good a piece of American biography as I've read."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1998, Donna Seaman, review of Medea, p. 1430; October 1, 1998, Steven Schroeder, review of The Left Hand of God, p. 290; November 15, 2001, Gavin Quinn, review of The Phoenix, p. 550; March 1, 2002, Carol Haggas, review of Rispondimi, p. 1094.

Business Week, April 23, 2001, Hardy Green, "From Radical to Robber Baron."

Choice, July-August, 1999, R. F. Berkey, review of The Left Hand of God, p. 1960.

Economist, March 3, 2001, "Left and Right; American Lives; Henry Villard, and American Titan," p. 2.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2001, review of Villard, p. 159; January 15, 2002, review of Rispondimi, p. 71.

Library Journal, July, 1995, Shannon Dekle, review of Follow your Heart, p. 124; April 15, 1998, Barbara Hoffert, review of Medea, p. 117.

New York Observer, April 23, 2001, James Buchan, "Henry Villard: Gutsy Reporter, Railroad Baron and Nice Guy," p. 30.

New York Times Book Review, June 14, 1998, David R. Slavitt, "Revenge Fantasy," p.17.

Oregon Historical Quarterly, fall, 2002, W. Thomas White, review of Villard, p. 394.

Publishers Weekly, July 3, 1995, review of Follow your Heart, p. 47; October 26, 1998, review of The Left Hand of God, p. 61; February 4, 2002, review of Rispondimi, p. 50.