Interview with Lee Child (June 2003)
Author of Persuader (2003)
June 2, 2003
Lee Child is the author of seven Jack Reacher
thrillers. His debut, Killing Floor, won both the Anthony and the Barry Awards for Best First Mystery. Foreign rights in the Jack Reacher series have sold in thirty-nine territories. Child, a native of England and former television writer, lives outside New York City, where he is at work on his eighth Jack Reacher thriller.
Q. Your latest book, Persuader, is one of your best yet. Was there anything in particular that energized you while writing it? Perhaps the return to the first-person narrative?
A. Thanks for the compliment! I guess I find each new book a very energizing experience, but for this one the return to first-person coupled with a powerful idea for the opening couple of sequences gave it extra momentum early in the process. Certainly it was fun to write -- really very linear, and very focused.
Q. Almost all the reviews for Persuader have been dazzling. How do you come off that high and buckle down for the next book? Or is your confidence strong enough that fear no longer enters into it?
A. Fear is always a part of it. Graham Greene once said "Success for a writer is merely failure delayed." But really, the thing is that a book-a-year writer like me works so far ahead that by the time, say, Persuader comes out, I've already written the following book and am starting the one after that. So in response to Persuader reviews, I'm thinking, what, that old thing? And in general I'm pretty self-confident, for a writer. By now I know I can do this.
Q. Let's talk about the movie deal. Some very well-known writers have been less than thrilled with the movie adaptations of their books. With Reacher, especially, the movie must rise and fall on its
casting. Will you have input? If not, why not?
A. I won't have any input, and I don't really want any. I'm a firm believer in "horses for courses." I write the novels, the graphics people design the jackets, the marketing people write the ads, the movie writers produce the script. We all focus on what we're good at. But I try to avert problems by being very choosy about who I sell the rights to -- I look for people with fine track records. Then I trust them. The pre-selection process means the movie will be at least OK, in my opinion, with the very good chance that it'll be excellent. But you're right, casting is everything. But the thing about acting is that it's never totally predictable. Go back a decade and you'll find Thomas Harris fans puzzled over Anthony Hopkins as Lecter. But that worked out OK, didn't it? Sometimes you just have to let the pros make their choices and work their magic.
Q. Your many fans are known to be a gregarious bunch, easily expressing their opinions on your
official website. You seem to be one of the more accessible authors. This interaction has always struck me as a kind of fearlessness on your part. Many authors don't bother. Why do you?
A. I do it because I want to. I like interacting with people. And all my life I have enjoyed quizzing people that I'm briefly in contact with. Like, a guy comes to paint my house ... I'm asking him about his
job, how he does it, what's fun, what isn't, what are the tricks, and so on. I figure other people are the same. They want to ask me things. I don't see writing as a grand profession. It's like being a house painter. It's something I do, like the painting is something he does. So let's indulge our mutual
curiosity.
Q. In a way, Jack Reacher represents an ideal most men might find hard to live up to. How much of Lee Child exists in Reacher? In the beginning, were you surprised to find that women flocked to your books? In fact, are you surprised at all by the wide variety of your reading audience?
A. There's a lot of me in Reacher. If I had his physical invulnerability, I would be him. Absent that physical prowess, I don't think he's hard to live up to. He's just a decent guy who tries to do the right
thing. That's something we would all do, I think. I am a little surprised that women love him so much -- I thought he was too uncivilized. That shows how much I know about women! I think two factors are in play: I find women more than men get upset about injustice and unfairness, down at a gut level, so the way Reacher rights wrongs in an old fashioned way must appeal. And he moves on ... much easier to contemplate a mental affair when the reader knows he'll be gone in a week -- thanks for the memories! I am amazed by the spread of my readership. I have fan letters from a 101-yr-old woman and a 10-yr-old boy. That's quite a range. The books have no bad language and Reacher is a classic hero, which I think helps explain it.
Q. Jack Reacher is very much an American hero. Though you live and write in the US, does being British help in some odd way to clarify your insight into American myth and behavior?
A. Being an outsider with a fresh eye helps, for sure. I feel sometimes I see things that are obscured by familiarity for those that have always been here.
Q. It's no secret that you are a vociferous reader. To what do you attribute your love of reading in general? What is the first book you ever remember reading?
A. I started reading early, and I can remember why: lack of alternative entertainment sources, and a need to escape a humdrum and boring life. Same for everybody, probably. The first "proper" book I read -- all writing, no pictures -- was Five on Kirrin Island from the Enid Blyton Famous Five series. Classic escapist reading. It was a series about three siblings with no parents who hooked up with their tomboy cousin and had adventures. Years later I was involved in a TV parody called "Five Go Mad on Mescaline." I felt a little bad about it because I had loved the originals so much. They meant a lot to me back then.
Q. How do you avoid being influenced by other genre writers? Or is that not something you worry about?
A. I don't worry about it. Generally writing is such a personal thing that even if you gave ten of us the same outline and the same opening paragraph, the resulting ten books would be totally different from each other.
Q. Commercial fiction seems to have more cachet now than ever. What excites or distresses you about the mystery/thriller genre today?
A. I'm excited by the way that it's kind of "out of the closet" ... whoever you are, it seems it's now okay to read John Sandford or Michael Connelly (or even a Reacher novel) in the front of the plane. And quite right, I say, because the narrative arc in these books is the fundamental narrative arc going way back in the human brain: the thrill of danger, peril, and then resolution and safety. It's why we learned to tell stories in the first place. The only thing that worries me is a slipshod tendency to make violence sicker and grosser, as a way of trying to be more cutting-edge. It's a poor substitute for genuine suspense.
Q. What's the last book you read? Would you name a few of your favorite authors?
A. Last book I read was One Last Hit by Nathan Walpow -- outstanding book. I read everybody in the genre. Unfair to mention favorites, but I love Joe Kanon's stuff. Outside the genre, William Styron maybe.
Q. Do you have any thoughts you wish to reveal on what the future holds for Jack Reacher?
A. The next book is a prequel, which takes place seven years before the events of my first book, Killing Floor. Reacher is 29, serving as a military policeman, the Berlin Wall is coming down, his brother is still alive, his mother is still alive. After that will come more present-day books, with maybe another prequel if people like the first one. Reacher will continue until readers get sick of him, and then he'll go out in a blaze of glory. The final title will be Die Lonely -- but I hope I'm not writing
it too soon.
Q. What's next for Lee Child?
A. Same old same old, except my daughter has moved out and gotten a job and an apartment, so my wife and I might move house for the next phase of our lives. But basically I don't plan anything. I just see what turns up. So far, it's been a great ride.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Interviews | Permalink
Comments
A _vociferous_ reader?
Posted by: | Aug 28, 2008 3:27:49 PM
