Running out of dog/Lehane Info
AKarim1462
I thought I'd post a snatch of a very recent interview by by P J Nunn of the
Great Dennis Lehane, covering his new book 'Mystic River' and his 'Running Out
of Dog' published by Otto Penzler. The short Story was a real departure,
featuring an every-day tale of White Trailer Folk. Anyone read it ?
PJ NUNN - Dennis, you know you're one of my all time favorite authors. Prayers
for Rain was a sort of breakthrough novel for you. Now you're working on a
standalone, Mystic River. Tell us a little about it, without spoiling anything.
Any idea when we can expect it to hit the shelves?
DENNIS LEHANE - Thank you very much for the compliment. The tentative
publication date for Mystic River is March/April 2001. I say tentative only
because I’m still working on it. It’s a book I’ve had in my head for
about seven years or so. It’s about three men who were once friends during
one year when they were boys, until one of them was abducted for four days, and
the horror of the incident destroyed the friendship.
Now as adults, one is an ex-con whose daughter has been murdered, one is a cop
investigating the murder, and the third (the one who was abducted long ago) may
or may not be the murderer. Beyond the plot, it’s a book about dying urban
enclaves and survivor guilt and the sometimes high price of even the simplest
of decisions. It’s been a long, sometimes grueling writing process if only
because I’ve nurtured it in my head for such a long time that I’m trying to
make it as close to perfect as I’m able before I let anyone see it.
That sounds intense! Why did you decide to go with a standalone at this point?
For several reasons, really. I thought Patrick and Angie needed a break -
they’ve been physically and psychologically traumatized over the course of
five books, and it just seemed like they needed a rest. Another reason was to
go back to writing in the third person.
Until I wrote A DRINK BEFORE THE WAR, I’d almost never written in the first
person voice, so it was odd to discover that a voice I rarely felt comfortable
with became the voice with which my work was associated. And finally, MYSTIC
RIVER has been trying to push its way out of me for a few years now, and it
finally got to the point where it was all but screaming in my head and refused
to let me think about anything else. So, I guess you could say it won the
battle and forced me to write it.
Does the widespread acclaim for Prayers for Rain put additional pressure on you
for writing the next Patrick and Angie episode? What are your plans for that?
PRAYERS FOR RAIN got a number of good reviews but also a lot of less than
stellar reviews, I’d say. Which is perfectly fine - I don’t expect to
please everyone. But I don’t feel any pressure regarding the next in the
series. I don’t write for critics or the audience, really. That’s a good
way to drive yourself insane because it’s impossible to predict what will
please people, and often what does please one annoys another. A friend of mine
who’s a golfer says he never competes against other golfers; he only competes
against himself. That’s pretty much the approach I take to writing. Any
pressure comes from within.
I know you've also written several short stories. Are you still doing that?
Where can readers find those?
I used to write a lot of short stories. That is in fact what I studied to be -
a short story writer. The novels came along by chance which I am eternally
grateful for - but by chance nonetheless. The problem with my short stories was
that I was a bit of a perfectionist, and I’d work them through a dozen drafts
- and then never send them out because I was certain they still weren’t good
enough.
Since becoming a published author, I’ve written one short story called
Running Out of Dog which was published in Otto Penzler’s Murder and Obsession
anthology, now available in paperback. It was also published in a recent
anthology called The Best American Mystery Short Stories of the Century, which
was quite an honor. However, a mistake was made at the publishing house and
they published the story with the first page missing. No lie. They’ve
promised me the mistake will be rectified for subsequent editions and the
paperback version, but the current first edition hardcover has this version,
which I beg all readers to skip in favor of all the other great stories in
there. The story will also be published in The Best Mystery Short Stories of
1999 which comes out in the fall.
No one is more surprised by all these honors than I am. It takes me years to
decide if I like something I wrote, so I don't even know if I'm worthy of the
accolades. As for writing other short stories, I’m hoping to do one by
year’s end. We’ll see.
How has your writing evolved over the years?
I hope for the better. There’s a kind of cutesy self-consciousness that I see
in some of my early work that I hope I’ve learned to avoid. I also think that
the older I get, the less I see clear-cut answers to a lot of societal
problems, so the books have become successively grayer in terms of moral
resolution.
Do you see any specific trends developing in the mystery/hardboiled genre?
Not really, but I don’t keep up with it the way I used to. One of the
downsides of writing mysteries is that I rarely read them anymore. Having said
that, the one thing I have noticed when I do read in the genre is that the
quality of craftsmanship is soaring. If you look at the pure writing ability of
people like George Pelecanos, Daniel Woodrell, SJ Rozan, James Lee Burke,
Michael Connelly, Minette Walters, Boston Tehran and James Hall to name just a
few - all that talent is kind of mind-boggling.
Has your writing won any awards?
I have won a Shamus and a Dily and the Nero Wolfe awards. The selection of
"Running Out of Dog" in both "best of the year" and "best of the century"
collections was quite humbling and gratifying as well.
When are you finally going to set up a website?
I don’t know if I ever will. I leave the promotional aspect of writing to the
publicity department at Harper Collins/Morrow. I’m simply not comfortable
doing any more; it could be the Irish in me. I’m very superstitious, and
anything that pulls me away from the actual writing and into the business of
writing just freaks me out, to be honest. I worry that if I expend juice over
there, I’ll have run dry when I need it here - working on a novel.
No complaints here. Your fans are glad that you’re busy writing. Who are you
when you're not writing? What are your hobbies?
I’m a pretty boring guy. I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even
when it gets arduous. As for hobbies, I like to play pool and tennis. I sort of
play golf because a lot of my friends are into it, but I’m just awful. I
think my handicap is six or seven thousand. I play poker a lot with guys I grew
up with, and occasionally go out to catch live music in small clubs. My wife
Sheila and I watch a lot of old movies and play with our two English Bulldogs,
Marlon and Stella. Outside of a serious addiction to watching football during
the autumn, that’s about it.
Who or what has most influenced your writing?
It’s a tough call. Graham Greene and Richard Price were hugely influential.
Elmore Leonard’s Detroit novels and Parker’s Spenser books certainly had an
effect. Two short story writers -Raymond Carver and Andre Dubus - set bars I
keep trying to reach as well.
As a writer, where do you see yourself in 10 years?
With less hair and carpal tunnel syndrome.
What do you enjoy most about writing?
The 'zone.' That place you reach sometimes where every cylinder is firing,
every word comes out exactly right, and your blood is fairly humming with
prose. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, nothing comes close. I’d
trade Super Bowl tickets for that feeling.
What do you find most difficult?
Being original about the mundane - trying to find a new way of saying "Joe
walked to his car" for example.
What is your best advice for new writers?
It’s been said to death but read. Read everything, good and bad. Read until
it’s spilling out of your ears and eyes.
Read the kind of books you want to write and then read books about writing:
John Gardner’s On Moral Fiction or On Becoming a Novelist; Janet Burroway’s
Writing Fiction; Milan Kundera’s The Art of the Novel - for example. And take
classes. Learn how to write. Wanting it isn't good enough. You’ve got to earn
it.
You have to put in the time. I wrote for ten solid years before I produced
anything publishable. Yes, it beats selling shoes, but it’s still very hard
work, and nothing is more insulting to someone who apprenticed hard and gave
everything they had to the craft, than to meet some wannabe-writer who hasn't
read much, hasn’t studied much, and yet still thinks he’s entitled to
publication simply because he wrote down whatever was in his head and slipped
in a few chapter breaks. Ask yourself if what you truly care about is to become
a good writer or simply to get published. These are two very different things.
If what you want is primarily to be published and make a boatload of cash,
there are so many easier ways to make money.
The best advice I ever got from a writing teacher was: No one cares. It sounds
so harsh, but it’s true. No one cares if you write or not. The world would
have gotten along just fine without my contributions to literature. If you
realize this, and I mean truly face it, and you then push forward - there’s a
good chance you have something to say and will become a good writer.
Ultimately, you have to love the process of writing. Otherwise, it’s too
lonely a profession and too rarely a profitable one to be worth the effort.
AKarim1462
Boston Beat
An interview with Dennis Lehane
Dennis Lehane is one of the finest of the new crop of noir thriller writers;
his intense, brooding books take his snappily witty, tough detectives into ever
darker reaches of Boston and the human soul. He talks to Roz Kaveney about his
five books, about Patrick and Angela and about his plans.
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Amazon.co.uk: You have made a very solid reputation with comparatively few
books--I remember picking up the third novel Sacred, loving it, instantly
searching out the first two and then waiting in some anxiety for the next two.
Dennis Lehane: It was quite a surprise--Sacred started my breakthrough to a
wider audience after a certain cult success with the first two books. I suppose
that it is more reader-friendly--it is certainly the book I wrote so that my
mother could show it to her friends and not get upset; it certainly is not
quite as dark as the first two and has a breezier tone. It is more of a homage,
as well; when a thriller starts with your detectives meeting a crippled
millionaire, you know that you are to some extent in Chandler country, and you
can start messing with people's expectations. It was also a book in which I
played with technique a bit more--it uses, and indeed the characters talk
about, the Rashomon technique of radically different viewpoints on, and
interpretations of, the same event. It is a book which does not cheat--even the
slightly gimmicky "FailSafe" stuff is set up, not directly perhaps, but in
terms of the relationship it is part of.
Amazon.co.uk: Your detective couple, Patrick and Angie live in a rather darker
Boston than that inhabited by, say, Robert B.Parker's Spenser.
Lehane: That's right. It's psychological suspense--about a young woman told
admiringly that she has a "real killer instinct" in her work in the City and
her discovery that she might have inherited a potential for real violence when
she learns the truth about her family.
Amazon.co.uk: How consciously is Patrick a creation--how much just a tone of
voice.
Lehane: He is a conscious creation--a Joseph Campbell-style hero who goes on
quests which result in some fairly negative epiphanies about his self. He knows
what his nature is and knows that his father is in him. What I did not
especially plan is the character trajectory whereby Patrick gradually finds
himself in a worse and worse psychological mess and Angie goes from strength to
strength--it was not at all something I intended.
Amazon.co.uk: There are not many private eye couples in fiction.
Lehane: Chandler's attitude was always that women were in books to get into
trouble and be got out of it. I have been accused of political correctness for
creating Angie, but it is really just a generation thing; she is modelled on
the women I grew up knowing, to whom all the clingy "save me" stuff would be
completely alien. She wasn't planned--in the second chapter of A Drink Before
the War Patrick went back to his office from a meeting and there she suddenly
just was, sitting behind a desk. It was a novel which went through a lot of
drafts--every character except for the victim and her son Roland was pretty
much a happy accident. It is a book that came out of a bad time in Boston--a
white wife-killer had claimed a black guy had done it and the police believed
him for several weeks and descended on black neighbourhoods in hordes; I
suppose it is optimistic in that, at the end, Patrick and Roland let each other
live, and pessimistic in that they leave to walk to opposite sides of town.
Amazon.co.uk: You are rather fond of master criminals.
Lehane: It is probably because I read too much Alastair Maclean when I was a
boy. My books always become more complex than I, at first, intend them to be, I
enjoy writing and so my books get longer. And I liked the game of inventing a
figure like Gerry Glynn who is always so good at taking the opposite side in
conversation to his real and monstrous feelings--a teacher of mine said he
worked out that Glynn had to be the monster just because he was so convincingly
portrayed as just a regular guy. The next book, though, has ordinary crimes and
criminals.
Amazon.co.uk: Will there be more Patrick and Angie books?
Lehane: Yes, there is at least a bit more to do with them, but writers need to
stop writing series about characters eventually. My books are about the
exploration of character, and when I know everything about Patrick and Angie,
there won't be any more reason to write about them. Audiences always have a
love-hate relationship with series because they want more of the same and know
there is always going to be a downside as part of the package, finding out
things about their favourite characters that perhaps they did not want to know.
Amazon.co.uk: Which brings us, rather neatly, to Bubba Rogowski.
Lehane: I grew up with men who have serious habits of violence, and still
occasionally hang with them in a non-judgmental sort of way. Bubba partly comes
from them, and partly, of course, he is my take on the psychotic or sociopathic
sidekick--Hawk, Joe Pike, Win, Mouse, Clete Purcell. My books are partly about
Patrick's dark side and one of his least attractive aspects is his preparedness
to profit from violence that Bubba executes for him--the gangster in Darkness
take my Hand points this out to him. And Bubba and the cop Devon are also very
useful devices for kick-starting chapters. Bubba is slightly different in the
less dark books, less of a menacing force of nature; it is a tricky thing to do
because I can't afford to soften him--he is never going to take up flower
arranging or nice little dinner parties--and his only positive quality is his
absolute loyalty to Patrick and Angie.
Amazon.co.uk: Do you do research?
Lehane: I do very little--I write the books and red flag the dodgy bits that I
need to check out by making phone calls. I envy colleagues like Michael
Connolly who have the capacity to start a book with the research and get it
right from the beginning; it is one of those skills you either have or don't,
like the ability to play soccer.
Amazon.co.uk: Tell me about the new book.
Lehane: Mystic River, which will be out next year, is not part of the
series--it is about three children who are friends for a few months when they
are about 10, until something happens to separate them. And 25 years later the
daughter of one of them is murdered, and another of them is the officer
investigating and the third is one of the principal suspects. It is a book
about the gentrification of dying enclave communities.
Amazon.co.uk: And what are you reading?
Lehane: Arturo Perez-Reverte-- The Dumas Club and others of his novels; he has
this fierce pace just like Dumas.
Amazon.co.uk: What are you listening to? Watching?
Lehane: I mostly collect soundtrack albums, so currently I am listening to the
Gladiator soundtrack and to High Fidelity. I use music when I write, and I
can't think if there are lyrics around to distract my mind with words. I
developed the taste for soundtracks from a lot of movie going--I use the
soundtrack from Heat a lot, because I can't avoid sentimentality if I listen to
Braveheart... I change the discs when I need to change my mood. The Sopranos is
about the only television I have been watching; I rent and buy videos and
DVDs--currently I am very impressed by the video of Fight Club.
Amazon.co.uk: The one of your novels we have not really discussed is Gone Baby
Gone...
Lehane: Let's just say that it is my favourite because it is the one which is
closest on the page to what I had in my head when I started