 Appraisal in retrospect looks at Turner's dedication to freelance writing—Jonathan Sale referred to him as "the patron saint of freelancing"—and has focused on his energy, productivity, the scope of his writing, and on its inherent humanity.Andrew O'Hagan, in his 1998 LRB retrospective, noted that while Turner's fingers had always been light on the keyboard, his writing was "with a strongly human pulse just under the skin, a richness of personal feeling in the blood.