I haven't much to say about my most recent book, Perish Twice, which No Exit Press are publishing in the UK, except that it is really good, and currently for sale (with a dandy picture of me on the back).
As for influences, I suppose Raymond Chandler would be the most telling. Though in my formative years I read a ton of pulp magazines (Black Mask, Dime Detective, etc.). I am currently rereading all of Rex Stout and liking it very much (again). On the other hand I have a PhD in English Language and Literature and was, among many other things, a professor of English, and have in the service of those conditions probably read everything since the invention of moveable type. Surely Hemingway and Faulkner and Scott Fitzgerald have seeped in, too.
I have no unpublished work. The first thing I wrote, Godwulf Manuscript, was published by the first publisher I sent it to. I know that's annoying, but what can I do?
As for my peers (if any), I never miss Elmore Leonard. Other than that I don't read much fiction any more. I tend to look at it like carpenters look at houses and it distracts me. I read some non-fiction. I recently read Jonathan Lear's Open Minded (Freud and the classical philosophers), and am currently reading Rembrandt's Eyes by Simon Schama. I don't understand any of it, of course, but it makes for such a good answer to the what-are-you-reading-these-days question.
The issue of violence rears endlessly. I have no approach to it. I have no problem with it. I pay no attention to it. I don't think about how much, how little, how graphic, etc. I think only of making my story in the best way I can, which may, or may not, require violence. And may, or may not, require a lot, or a little. I do not very much attend to the monkey see, monkey do, theory of literary influence.
As for the matter of sexuality. Again, I simply don't think that way. I guess in life I would come down firmly in favour of it. In the practice of story telling I use the amount necessary to make the novel good. As a practical matter, it is very difficult to depict sex graphically without sounding dopey, so I tend toward the "they embraced the next morning" approach.
Having covered violence and sex, I turn to politics. My political credo is "don't vote - it just encourages them". I have no political agenda in my writing, but since my writing is the result of experience filtered through imagination I assume it is not devoid of attitude. How the reader reacts to that attitude, would, I assume, depend on his own attitudes. This, it seems to me has always been so, and to that extent all writing is, and always has been, political as opposed to apolitical.
To accomplish all this magic, I write five pages a day, every day, on a word processor. The pages are adjusted to be about one-to-one with the final printed page so that a 300 page manuscript will produce a 300 page book more or less. I revise in process. But what I have at the end of the day is, essentially, what you see in the book. I don't do a second draft. I normally work at an office in my home from maybe 9.30 to maybe 2.30. First I do five pages on the current novel. Then, normally after lunch, I work on the current other project (most usually a screenplay, usually with Joan). Then I take a nap, go to the gym, and the day is done. I feed Pearl, eat supper, and watch baseball. Once a year I do a book tour. Fifteen cities in thirty days. And for maybe a week or more each year I am on location with whatever film we're making (the last one was Walking Shadow, which we shot in Vancouver, and which aired in the USA on A&E cable). I do a read through with the cast and director, shoot my cameo (in Walking Shadow I play a janitor, and brilliantly), eat some donuts and come home.
I am often asked the principal appeal of the fiction I write. I have always contended that it is my picture on the back, but if that answer isn't satisfactory, I suppose one might argue that I present in relatively linear and comprehensible fashion a world in which a protagonist finds love and is not defeated. Modesty forbids that I comment on how well I do that. But were that same world presented by someone else it might not be as appealing.
I am not particularly au fait with film (though I very much enjoyed Shane). On the other hand, one cannot be writing now without having film's narrative techniques imposed on one's consciousness (montage, lap dissolves, etc. etc.). Music is very much a factor however. The writing of prose seems to me very much akin to the writing of music (which I don't know how to do), but I seem to choose one combination of words rather than another on the basis of how it sounds. And I like books partly because they sound good. And I dislike books partly because they sound bad. Simon Schama, for instance, sounds terrific. And so does Elmore Leonard.
I suppose I have imagined the central characters before I conjour a plot. In fact I don't outline, or plot ahead. I start with the simplest of story ideas (Spenser and a group of associates from past novels go west and tame a town - Potshot) and begin. When I write the first page, I don't know what the second page will say. Or how the book will end, or what I'm going to write tomorrow. This is hard on the psyche unless you are confident, but I've written about forty books, all of them published, so I assume that probably I can do another one. For the new writer, however, an outline might be comforting. Of course a distinction between plot and character is, finally, an artificial distinction. Henry James once said (something like) what is plot but the illustration of character. What is character but the determinant of plot?
I live in Boston, so I find it easier to write about Boston, and I'm more comfortable there because I have lived there for more than fifty years. That said, there is no place where creative juices flow or don't flow. Indeed if one is a professional writer one probably shouldn't spend too much time waiting for the creative juices. They start to flow when they are called upon. Indeed, I suspect, one reason people are writers is because they flow all the time anyway. You're not, probably, creative because you write. You write, probably, because you're creative, willy nilly.
I am perfectly happy with my publisher and editor. I think they treat me kindly, pay me appropriately, market the books well. I like the people at Penguin Putnam Inc. I don't get a lot of editing (mostly it's the copy editor who cleans up after me), but what I get is intelligent and I like my editor personally, too.
I don't think about the reader when I write. Or the editor, or the movie deal, or the advance, or even my picture on the back. I am simply focused on making this story, and getting it right: the only question I ask is, is it any good?. Once I'm done and it's being published, then it becomes product, and all future questions are rooted in economic gain.
I have no idea about the current state of literacy. I think that the transfer of image and information can take place in a variety of ways, and as long as it does take place, I'm not sure I know if the particular medium matters. In the same vein, I think a writer, within the limits of temperament, should be what he or she needs to be in order to do his or her work. I also suspect that what a writer is would be connected to what the person is. So the world and monastic isolation are equally acceptable as a condition for writers.
In the same way I don't think religious conviction matters in literary terms. If you are religious it will affect your writing. If you are not, it will affect your writing. You write out of yourself, and don't have much choice in that. I see no harm in religion.
I have touched on my feelings about the commercial aspects of writing above, but I think it is fair to say that if no one would pay me, I would have to do something else. The world of non-commercial publishing (i.e. vanity press and academic publication) does not seem to produce better writing. As you doubtless recall, Dr Johnson once said something to the effect that only a block head, sir, writes for anything but money.
And, finally, I am on page 200, today, of the next book about Spenser, which is called Widow's Walk, and will be published in USA next spring. It's grand.
Titles
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