A Full-Blooded Character: An Interview With Dennis Lehane
by Shawn Alff
Dennis Lehane grew up in the Dorchester section of Boston’s inner-city. Since his first novel, A Drink Before the War, won the Shamus Award, he’s published seven more novels with William Morrow & Co. that have become international bestsellers: Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone Baby Gone; Prayers for Rain; Mystic River; and Shutter Island. He also published Coronado, a collection of five stories and a play. His last novel, The Given Day, was published in September 2008. His work has been translated into 28 languages. The film adaptations of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone have garnered numerous awards. In February 2010, a major motion picture film adaptation of Shutter Island was
released. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, and Mark Ruffalo. Dennis earned his MFA
from Florida International University and is the writer-in-residence at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he runs the Eckerd
College Writers’ Conference: Writers in Paradise. He divides his time between St. Petersburg and Boston.
_________
SA: For you, does a story begin with an event or a reaction to that event?
DL: Every book’s different, but it usually begins with characters. They walk around my head for a while and then I send them out to find me
a story. Eventually, they come back with one, which I’ve always felt is mighty decent of them. The Given Day was the exception because all
I knew at the start was that I wanted to write about the 1919 Boston Police Strike. All the characters came after, which was a weird way to
write for me.
SA: What do you believe is more important, to tell a good story, or to address a deeper political, social, or spiritual concern?
DL: Well, I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. But, for the sake of argument, the first law of good storytelling is good storytelling. If
you want to write a diatribe against the powers that be, go right ahead, but don’t expect me to read it unless it has full-blooded characters and an actual, you know, story at its center. I can read Fareed Zakaria for my politics, Jonathan Kozol for my social concerns, and half a dozen
philosophers for my spiritual needs. I read fiction to embark on a journey of narrative, not of lecture.
SA: You have said that if you repress speech, you will repress thought. Is writing a way of thinking for you?
DL: Sure. Someone smarter than me once said, “How do I know what I think until I put it to the page?” I certainly don’t like to know what ax
I’m grinding on, say, a sociological level when I start a book, because then I’ll write a polemic and bore the piss out of you. For me, writing
fiction should be as much an act of discovery as reading it will be once it’s published.
SA: When do you first share a draft of a new work? For this early draft, do you seek the opinion of a professional writer, or do you rely on a
regular reader who is more concerned with the practical points of the story as opposed to the craft?
DL: I usually show a third draft to my wife and my editor first, then my agent, then a select few friends—only one of whom is a writer. I get my literary game on with that one friend and my editor. From everyone else I want visceral gut reaction.
SA: You have never worked in law enforcement, and as far as we know you’ve never been involved in the criminal underworld, yet you often
write about these subjects. How do you conduct your research? Do you interview police officers and criminals, or do you rely on your
imagination and what has been written on these topics?
DL: It’s mostly imagination. I knew a cop growing up who told me the thing writers always get wrong is the “this time it’s personal” aspect of
his job. He assured me it was never personal; you just punch a clock. I never forgot that, and it helped me immeasurably when I created
cops in my books. As for the criminals, no, I have no need to interview anyone. I grew up with such a heightened sense of class rage that I
might not get why someone stalks and kills someone or why some moron kids lit another kid on fire the other day, but I totally get why
someone would knock over a bank or drop off the grid and refuse to play ball with the system.
SA: For a historical novel like The Given Day, did you start by writing a draft based on your familiarity with the material, or did you first read
up on WWI era Boston?
DL: I read for a solid year about the post-WWI world. Then I realized that while I’d become an expert on the time period, which would be
helpful for five questions on Jeopardy, I wasn’t getting any writing done. So I put all the literature aside and went to work.
SA: When you write a historical novel, what responsibility do you have to stick to the facts?
DL: It’s a weird line. If, for example, I’m saying the Boston Police Strike was, in many ways, caused by the death of Commissioner Stephen
O’Meara, then I think that should be true. (It is.) If, however, I need to speed up months of labor negotiations and, for dramatic purposes,
make it appear most of them took place in the final days before the actual strike, that’s really just an issue of compression and the reader,
whether she knows it or not, thanks me for not asking her to wade through a thousand pages of boardroom debates. I think we’re way too
literal an age and expect way too many “facts” from our fiction, but at the same time, if I’m clearly stating to the reader that the facts are thus, then the facts should be thus.
SA: During the early years of your career, you carried around an index card that read, “nobody cares.” What was the point of this and how
did it help you? What issue for beginning writers does this piece of hardnosed optimism address?
DL: It relieved so much pressure. What it meant to me was that no one cared if I failed. It was cool; I could train to be a plumber in my late
twenties if it didn’t work out. Nobody was keeping score. Similarly, nobody cares removed any sense of pretentious entitlement along the
lines of, “The world needs my voice. I’m owed readership.” No, sorry, no one cares, kid, if you become a plumber or a writer. It’s all on you.
As for beginning writers, I commend you wholeheartedly for daring to try and say something about the world or the universal condition
or whatever gets you chugging out of the station. I’m your biggest cheerleader. But once the rah-rah is over, you do have to realize this is
a job. It’s hard. And no one’s giving out medals just for showing up. The most unfortunate myth about writing is that because all it involves
is a pen and a brain, anyone can do it. No. Anyone can’t. Anymore than anyone can become a baseball player or a mathematician. We all have different skill sets and some aren’t conducive to the creative arts.
SA: Considering that Shutter Island encourages rereading in order to understand the parallel levels the book works on, do you think writing
can be alive in the same sense that a play can, changing with each recitation?
DL: I’d like to think so. Some books are more given to the varied interpretation than others but when I think of my favorite novels--The
Great Gatsby, Blood Meridian, The Last Good Kiss, to name just three—they all reward rereading.
SA: When your first novel, A Drink Before the War, was shopped around to publishers, you refused to let it come out as a paperback original.
What advice would you give first time authors for dealing with intimidating publishers?
DL: Everybody carves their own path, so I’m not going to sell the idea that there’s only one or two ways to build a career. In my case, I was
going on instinct. It just felt right. Now if the book had gone through another year of rejections? Might have been a whole different story.
The thing to remember about publishers—and agents—is that most of them are passionately in love with books. They are waiting on bended knee for you to whisper in their ear and seduce them. That’s what good writing is—seduction. So don’t be intimidated, just be good. Bring your `A’ game. Oh, and never send something out before it’s ready.
SA: After the success of Mystic River, you reportedly felt a need to diverge from crime fiction with the thriller Shutter Island to avoid
critical comparisons. You have since branched out into historical fiction with The Given Day, and you have produced a collection of short works
in Coronado. Do you feel a need to take risk and explore new territory with your writing? How much of this genre divergence is an attempt
to confound critics? What surprises should we expect next?
DL: Well, it won’t be a surprise if I tell you what to expect. For the record, I’m not actively trying to confound anyone. I’m just following
this really cool path and I have no idea where it leads except that it doesn’t lead back to where I’ve already been. If I lose some readers
over it, then I lose some readers. If I baffle some critics, well, they can take it. Bogart said, “All you owe the audience is a great performance.”
I couldn’t put it any better.
SA: What do you think the main criticism of your work is, and is it justified?
DL: Oh, shit, I don’t know. Maybe that I veer toward melodrama too much, which is fair because I’m pursuing high drama—what Cormac
McCarthy calls “fiction of mortal event”—and if you fall off the high drama tightrope you land in melodrama.
SA: A hundred years from now, how would you want to be described in an anthology of 20th and 21st century American literature?
DL: Cogently.
SA: In many ways, Boston is your literary home turf. Considering you split half your time between Boston and St. Petersburg, can we expect
any future works to be set in Florida? Shutter Island, for example, took place on an island with a hurricane baring down, and the Cold War
looming large. Some might suggest that this would be the perfect work to set on a Florida island, with the proximity to Cuba and the constant
threat of hurricanes. In general, is Florida too sunny a place for your work, which tends to deal with darker themes?
DL: Sunny Florida’s far darker than most of the things I could dream up. You’ve got serial killers and assholes who throw babies from
moving cars and kids who light other kids on fire and more sexual predators than you could swing a cat at. In Boston, crime is much more
predictable, much more economy-based. In Florida, it’s all random, man. Crazy crime. That’s why the best Florida writers are so comic--
you can’t write about what goes on down here with a straight face or else you’d go mad.
SA: Violence is a common thread in your novels. Why do you think that is?
DL: The short answer is I grew up in a violent place during a particularly violent epoch (busing) in the city’s history. And I was too young to
understand it so I became fascinated by it—why are we violent? When does violence serve a purpose? Is it ever simple? Etc.
SA: Have you ever been in a bar brawl?
DL: Been in a couple, though I never threw a punch. I was once in one where every table but ours—every single one—was destroyed. Just
matchsticks on the floor. It was Christmas night, 1987.
SA: On several occasions, you’ve confessed the regret of never becoming a bartender. What appeals to you about this profession and
what is stopping you from living this dream? If you did work in a bar, which one would it be and what would be your specialty drink?
DL: I’d work in a nice pub with serious dart players and a good jukebox and no sports-bar vibe. As for my alleged love of bartending,
it all started as a joke line and it just caught fire. Teaches me to make a joke in print, I swear.
This interview originally appeared in Volume 4.
released. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, and Mark Ruffalo. Dennis earned his MFA
from Florida International University and is the writer-in-residence at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he runs the Eckerd
College Writers’ Conference: Writers in Paradise. He divides his time between St. Petersburg and Boston.
_________
SA: For you, does a story begin with an event or a reaction to that event?
DL: Every book’s different, but it usually begins with characters. They walk around my head for a while and then I send them out to find me
a story. Eventually, they come back with one, which I’ve always felt is mighty decent of them. The Given Day was the exception because all
I knew at the start was that I wanted to write about the 1919 Boston Police Strike. All the characters came after, which was a weird way to
write for me.
SA: What do you believe is more important, to tell a good story, or to address a deeper political, social, or spiritual concern?
DL: Well, I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. But, for the sake of argument, the first law of good storytelling is good storytelling. If
you want to write a diatribe against the powers that be, go right ahead, but don’t expect me to read it unless it has full-blooded characters and an actual, you know, story at its center. I can read Fareed Zakaria for my politics, Jonathan Kozol for my social concerns, and half a dozen
philosophers for my spiritual needs. I read fiction to embark on a journey of narrative, not of lecture.
SA: You have said that if you repress speech, you will repress thought. Is writing a way of thinking for you?
DL: Sure. Someone smarter than me once said, “How do I know what I think until I put it to the page?” I certainly don’t like to know what ax
I’m grinding on, say, a sociological level when I start a book, because then I’ll write a polemic and bore the piss out of you. For me, writing
fiction should be as much an act of discovery as reading it will be once it’s published.
SA: When do you first share a draft of a new work? For this early draft, do you seek the opinion of a professional writer, or do you rely on a
regular reader who is more concerned with the practical points of the story as opposed to the craft?
DL: I usually show a third draft to my wife and my editor first, then my agent, then a select few friends—only one of whom is a writer. I get my literary game on with that one friend and my editor. From everyone else I want visceral gut reaction.
SA: You have never worked in law enforcement, and as far as we know you’ve never been involved in the criminal underworld, yet you often
write about these subjects. How do you conduct your research? Do you interview police officers and criminals, or do you rely on your
imagination and what has been written on these topics?
DL: It’s mostly imagination. I knew a cop growing up who told me the thing writers always get wrong is the “this time it’s personal” aspect of
his job. He assured me it was never personal; you just punch a clock. I never forgot that, and it helped me immeasurably when I created
cops in my books. As for the criminals, no, I have no need to interview anyone. I grew up with such a heightened sense of class rage that I
might not get why someone stalks and kills someone or why some moron kids lit another kid on fire the other day, but I totally get why
someone would knock over a bank or drop off the grid and refuse to play ball with the system.
SA: For a historical novel like The Given Day, did you start by writing a draft based on your familiarity with the material, or did you first read
up on WWI era Boston?
DL: I read for a solid year about the post-WWI world. Then I realized that while I’d become an expert on the time period, which would be
helpful for five questions on Jeopardy, I wasn’t getting any writing done. So I put all the literature aside and went to work.
SA: When you write a historical novel, what responsibility do you have to stick to the facts?
DL: It’s a weird line. If, for example, I’m saying the Boston Police Strike was, in many ways, caused by the death of Commissioner Stephen
O’Meara, then I think that should be true. (It is.) If, however, I need to speed up months of labor negotiations and, for dramatic purposes,
make it appear most of them took place in the final days before the actual strike, that’s really just an issue of compression and the reader,
whether she knows it or not, thanks me for not asking her to wade through a thousand pages of boardroom debates. I think we’re way too
literal an age and expect way too many “facts” from our fiction, but at the same time, if I’m clearly stating to the reader that the facts are thus, then the facts should be thus.
SA: During the early years of your career, you carried around an index card that read, “nobody cares.” What was the point of this and how
did it help you? What issue for beginning writers does this piece of hardnosed optimism address?
DL: It relieved so much pressure. What it meant to me was that no one cared if I failed. It was cool; I could train to be a plumber in my late
twenties if it didn’t work out. Nobody was keeping score. Similarly, nobody cares removed any sense of pretentious entitlement along the
lines of, “The world needs my voice. I’m owed readership.” No, sorry, no one cares, kid, if you become a plumber or a writer. It’s all on you.
As for beginning writers, I commend you wholeheartedly for daring to try and say something about the world or the universal condition
or whatever gets you chugging out of the station. I’m your biggest cheerleader. But once the rah-rah is over, you do have to realize this is
a job. It’s hard. And no one’s giving out medals just for showing up. The most unfortunate myth about writing is that because all it involves
is a pen and a brain, anyone can do it. No. Anyone can’t. Anymore than anyone can become a baseball player or a mathematician. We all have different skill sets and some aren’t conducive to the creative arts.
SA: Considering that Shutter Island encourages rereading in order to understand the parallel levels the book works on, do you think writing
can be alive in the same sense that a play can, changing with each recitation?
DL: I’d like to think so. Some books are more given to the varied interpretation than others but when I think of my favorite novels--The
Great Gatsby, Blood Meridian, The Last Good Kiss, to name just three—they all reward rereading.
SA: When your first novel, A Drink Before the War, was shopped around to publishers, you refused to let it come out as a paperback original.
What advice would you give first time authors for dealing with intimidating publishers?
DL: Everybody carves their own path, so I’m not going to sell the idea that there’s only one or two ways to build a career. In my case, I was
going on instinct. It just felt right. Now if the book had gone through another year of rejections? Might have been a whole different story.
The thing to remember about publishers—and agents—is that most of them are passionately in love with books. They are waiting on bended knee for you to whisper in their ear and seduce them. That’s what good writing is—seduction. So don’t be intimidated, just be good. Bring your `A’ game. Oh, and never send something out before it’s ready.
SA: After the success of Mystic River, you reportedly felt a need to diverge from crime fiction with the thriller Shutter Island to avoid
critical comparisons. You have since branched out into historical fiction with The Given Day, and you have produced a collection of short works
in Coronado. Do you feel a need to take risk and explore new territory with your writing? How much of this genre divergence is an attempt
to confound critics? What surprises should we expect next?
DL: Well, it won’t be a surprise if I tell you what to expect. For the record, I’m not actively trying to confound anyone. I’m just following
this really cool path and I have no idea where it leads except that it doesn’t lead back to where I’ve already been. If I lose some readers
over it, then I lose some readers. If I baffle some critics, well, they can take it. Bogart said, “All you owe the audience is a great performance.”
I couldn’t put it any better.
SA: What do you think the main criticism of your work is, and is it justified?
DL: Oh, shit, I don’t know. Maybe that I veer toward melodrama too much, which is fair because I’m pursuing high drama—what Cormac
McCarthy calls “fiction of mortal event”—and if you fall off the high drama tightrope you land in melodrama.
SA: A hundred years from now, how would you want to be described in an anthology of 20th and 21st century American literature?
DL: Cogently.
SA: In many ways, Boston is your literary home turf. Considering you split half your time between Boston and St. Petersburg, can we expect
any future works to be set in Florida? Shutter Island, for example, took place on an island with a hurricane baring down, and the Cold War
looming large. Some might suggest that this would be the perfect work to set on a Florida island, with the proximity to Cuba and the constant
threat of hurricanes. In general, is Florida too sunny a place for your work, which tends to deal with darker themes?
DL: Sunny Florida’s far darker than most of the things I could dream up. You’ve got serial killers and assholes who throw babies from
moving cars and kids who light other kids on fire and more sexual predators than you could swing a cat at. In Boston, crime is much more
predictable, much more economy-based. In Florida, it’s all random, man. Crazy crime. That’s why the best Florida writers are so comic--
you can’t write about what goes on down here with a straight face or else you’d go mad.
SA: Violence is a common thread in your novels. Why do you think that is?
DL: The short answer is I grew up in a violent place during a particularly violent epoch (busing) in the city’s history. And I was too young to
understand it so I became fascinated by it—why are we violent? When does violence serve a purpose? Is it ever simple? Etc.
SA: Have you ever been in a bar brawl?
DL: Been in a couple, though I never threw a punch. I was once in one where every table but ours—every single one—was destroyed. Just
matchsticks on the floor. It was Christmas night, 1987.
SA: On several occasions, you’ve confessed the regret of never becoming a bartender. What appeals to you about this profession and
what is stopping you from living this dream? If you did work in a bar, which one would it be and what would be your specialty drink?
DL: I’d work in a nice pub with serious dart players and a good jukebox and no sports-bar vibe. As for my alleged love of bartending,
it all started as a joke line and it just caught fire. Teaches me to make a joke in print, I swear.
This interview originally appeared in Volume 4.
