John Connolly's Blog, page 4
January 14, 2011
Macabre Cadaver Interview
January 9, 2011
Twenty Mysteries You Must Read Before You Die
1.THE GLASS KEY-DASHIELL HAMMETT (1931). Also RED HARVEST (1929), where the western becomes the PI novel, and THE MALTESE FALCON (1931)
2.THE LONG GOODBYE-Raymond Chandler (1953), the most nuanced of his books, closely followed by FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940) and THE BIG SLEEP (1939)
3.THE CHILL-Ross Macdonald(1964). Often regarded, unfairly, as being in Chandler's shadow, this novel has one of the greatest twists in mystery fiction. Also THE DOOMSTERS(1958), THE UNDERGROUND MAN (1971), SLEEPING BEAUTY (1973), THE GOODBYE LOOK (1969), and THE GALTON CASE (1959)
4.DEEP WATER-Patricia Highsmith (1957). She has a grim view of the human condition, and this is quite, quite chilling. Also THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY(1955)
5.THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE-George V.Higgins (1972). Greatest dialogue ever in a crime novel. See also Robert B.Parker and Dennis Lehane. For those interested in the art of writing, Higgins's book ON WRITING (1990) is worth hunting down.
6.THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN-James Lee Burke (2007). The greatest living mystery writer tackles post-Katrina New Orleans. Genius. Any of the Robicheaux books are worth reading, although the first in the series, THE NEON RAIN (1987) is actually untypical of what follows, and one could argue that Burke really finds his feet with the second book, HEAVEN'S PRISONERS (1988). Also BLACK CHERRY BLUES (1989), DIXIE CITY JAM (1994) and THE GLASS RAINBOW (2010)
7.THE LECTER TRILOGY-Thomas Harris. RED DRAGON (1981),SILENCE OF THE LAMBS(1988), HANNIBAL(1999). Ignore HANNIBAL RISING. It's awful, and is basically a novelization of a film script. While HANNIBAL received some terrible reviews, and its ending was particularly lambasted, there is an internal logic to the first three novels that makes the ending of HANNIBAL inevitable. I'm quite happy to discuss this in a bar, as long as someone buys me drinks first.
8.STRANGER IN MY GRAVE-Margaret Millar (1960). Wife of Ross Macdonald, and unfairly neglected. Brilliant on women, and the class divide. Also BEAST IN VIEW (1966).
9.LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE DEAF MAN-Ed McBain (1972). The father of the modern police procedural, with half a century of 87th Precinct Books. Without him, there would have been no HILL STREET BLUES, and arguably no HOMICIDE or THE WIRE. The mid-period novels (1960-1980) are probably the best, including FUZZ (1968), BLOOD RELATIVES (1975).
10.THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD-Agatha Christie (1926). Another great 'twist' novel, and one that raises fascinating questions about the relationship between detective and criminal, a question that finds its ultimate answer in the Poirot book intended for posthumous publication, CURTAIN (1975)
11. THE NAME OF THE ROSE 1980) by Umberto Eco. Arguably his only readable novel, and certainly his most enjoyable, and that includes the pseuds' fave, FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM
12. MORALITY PLAY ( 1995) by Barry Unsworth. A group of travelling players investigate a murder, and inadvertently invent the modern theatre.
13. THE BLACK ECHO (1992) by Michael Connelly. Still one of the greatest mystery debuts of all time, and the first glimpse of Detective Harry Bosch. Also THE CONCRETE BLONDE (1994) and THE LAST COYOTE (1995)
14. THE CRYING OF LOT 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon. The Californian crime novel's postmodern re-imagining as absurdist conspiracy thriller.
15. THE BIG BLOWDOWN (1999) by George Pelecanos. The first of the DC Quartet from a modern master, set in post-WWII Washington. Also KING SUCKERMAN (1997), THE SWEET FOREVER (1998) and SHAME THE DEVIL (2000).
16. WHAT THE DEAD KNOW (2007) by Laura Lippman. Her finest novel; one of a pair of missing girls reappears after 30 years.
17. HAWKSMOOR (1985) by Peter Ackroyd. Twin narratives link 20th century child-killings with a Satanic 17th century architect. Quite chilling, and you'll never quite view the city of London in the same way again.
18. FAST ONE (1932) by Paul Cain. Landmark hard-boiled novel by an almost forgotten master of the genre.
19. MIAMI BLUES (1984) by Charles Willeford. If Beckett had written a hard-boiled novel about a cop trying to find his missing gun...
20. THE LAST GOOD KISS (1978) by James Crumley. The first great post-Vietnam mystery novel by the late Crumley, a writer held in much esteem and affection by his fellow mystery writers.
Take Ten
TAKE TEN
What is your earliest childhood memory?
We lived with my grandparents, who had the downstairs rooms while my parents and I lived upstairs. I can remember sitting on my grandparents' kitchen floor as a very small boy, surrounded by homemade jam that I'd smeared everywhere after opening one of their cupboards. And I don't even like jam. I think I was just being willfully destructive. I can also remember our dog being run over by the binmen, and my grandfather dying. Death and jam: those are my childhood memories.
Who was your first pin-up?
I suspect that it was Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who. ("Mummy, the lady makes me feel funny.") Actually, she still looks pretty good now, and she's 62, which I find hard to believe. She's kept her dignity as well: Katy Manning, who played her predecessor, Jo Grant, was once photographed naked with a Dalek for a magazine called Girl Illustrated. It was probably neck-and-neck between Elisabeth and "Wuthering Heights"-era Kate Bush. I'm not sure what I would have done if they'd both started fighting over me. Expired, probably.
Which of your peers do you most admire, and why?
I'm not sure that he's my peer as he's both older than me, and far better at what he does, but James Lee Burke was one of the writers who made me want to write mysteries. He's the greatest living mystery writer, bar none. Jack Nicholson once said of Marlon Brando that, when he dies, everybody else moves up one. Burke is our Brando.
What would you be doing with your life if you hadn't chosen this career path? Initially, I wanted to be a vet, but I suspect that I'd just read too many James Herriot books, and I didn't really want to spend my afternoons with my forearm buried in a cow. I'd probably still be a journalist, which would be no bad thing, except possibly for journalism.Can you reveal one of your guilty pleasures?
You know, I've reached the age where I'm beginning to doubt the whole concept of 'guilty pleasures', aside from maybe touching farm animals inappropriately. Still, given the fact that I'm pretty careful about exercising regularly, it would probably be a warm cinnamon bun in Simon's Place at the George's Street Arcade in Dublin. I live in fear of Gary Ranford, the guy who trains me, passing by while I'm stuffing my face, and shaking his head in disappointment.
Who would like to see cast in the movie of your life?
I'd like to see Colin Firth, but they'd probably cast Steve Buscemi. As long as it's somebody thin . . .
Who are you following on Twitter?
I'm a recent convert to Twitter, but I'm a big fan of Phill Jupitus. I'm currently reading his book on being a DJ, Hello, Nantwich, which is almost as enjoyable as Dave Fanning's autobiography, which I really liked. His continued enthusiasm for music is very lovely indeed.
What's the first thing you would buy if you won the Lottery?
I have an old Ford Mustang that I don't really get to drive very much, as I don't have off-street parking, so I'd buy a garage closer to my house. I'd also buy one very expensive piece of art, and then worry about someone stealing it.
What would you pack for your desert island?
An iPod, a solar charger, the complete works of P.G. Wodehouse, and Jennie, my other half, although I suspect she'd brain me with a coconut before one week was out. I'm not very keen on the whole desert island business because I'm not very good at lounging around. I suspect that I'd get a bit bored, and a bit annoying.
What's at the top of your 'things to do before I die' list?
Not die.
January 4, 2011
On James Lee Burke
For many of my generation of mystery writers, James Lee Burke is the greatest living author in our field, and one of the most accomplished literary stylists in modern American letters. For better or worse, I would not be writing without his influence, and all that I have written, I have written in his shadow. To borrow a phrase used by Jack Nicholson of Marlon Brando: "When he dies, everybody else moves up one."
Burke's preeminence is due, in no small part, to the manner in which he came to the mystery novel. Before publishing, in 1987, The Neon Rain, the first book to feature the recurring character of Dave Robicheaux, he had read little in the genre, the work of Raymond Chandler and James Crumley apart, so he approached the task of writing a mystery largely freed from any obligation to the perceived requisites. The books that have emerged in the decades since are, in a sense, only incidentally mysteries: they are, first and foremost, literate, literary, socially engaged novels. To read them is to encounter a great novelist applying his gifts to a sometimes underrated form, reinventing and reinvigorating it by his presence.
On this basis alone, he deserves his place in our Pantheon, but underlying the elegance and beauty of his prose, and an engagement with the natural world that is virtually unrivalled in modern fiction, is a profound moral sensibility, one that is informed by Burke's own personal struggles and convictions. Burke is a liberal (that much abused word, utilised as an insult by those who least understand its meaning) in the classic Steinbeck/ Dorothy Day mode, with a passionate hatred of social injustice, and a hardwired instinct to take the side of the weak and the powerless. As a consequence, compassion and empathy infuse his work, while his political and social commentary, although consistent, is carefully, and subtly, couched. For example, references to the war in Vietnam in the novels, a defining moment in Robicheaux's past, act not only as markers to that period but as metaphors for later, dirtier conflicts, particularly those in Central America in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Equally, Burke has made no secret of his own demons: his early difficulties with alcohol, his frustration at being out of print for most of his thirties while struggling to raise a family, and the resulting bitterness that almost tipped him into nihilism. His salvation was no simple matter. Strengthened by the love and support of his wife, Pearl, he attained sobriety through the 12-step program, and rediscovered his childhood Catholicism. He also found himself published again when The Lost Get-Back Boogie, which had been under submission for nine years, and had been rejected more than a hundred times, was finally published by the Louisiana University Press in 1986.
Knowing something of Burke himself better enables us to understand how his greatest literary creation came into being. Dave Robicheaux is a complex character, both humane in his judgements, and intensely, movingly human in his failings. His intolerance of wickedness can, at times, make him seem as stern as the God of the Old Testament, but this, I suspect, is a reflection of Burke's own belief that there are no little evils: sins, both major and minor, mortal and venial, are born of the same mother, and great wrongs grow from small seeds. As Victor Hugo once wrote, "Men become accustomed to poison by degrees"; or, as Burke himself has put it, rather more wittily, "Give the Devil an air-conditioner, and you'll never get him out of the office."
Yet an intolerance for evil is not the same as an unwillingness to forgive sins. Robicheaux, like his creator, is too aware of his own frailties to pass sentence rashly upon others, and, similarly, Burke is too nuanced a writer to allow Robicheaux to carry the sole moral authority in his books. Clete Purcel, his former partner, is given crucial opportunities to question Robicheaux's occasional inflexibility, and similar criticism is permitted to be leveled at Robicheaux by the women who love and respect him. But it is also those closest to him who recognise that the person who is hardest on Robicheaux is Robicheaux himself, and such intense self-criticism, if left unchecked, can itself become a form of vanity.
Ultimately, what Robicheaux and those who act alongside him understand is the truth of the words of their creator's namesake, the Irish writer and philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." To stand by while others suffer is to be complicit in their sufferings; to attempt to bring those sufferings to an end, and thus remove a little of the evil from the world, even at great cost to oneself, is an act of empathy and justice that, if one believes in God, brings us closer to the Divine and, even if one does not believe, makes one a better person for the effort.
The Robicheaux novels are one of the crowning glories of mystery fiction, and The Glass Rainbow is a worthy addition to their number. Long may Burke continue to write, for I'm in no hurry to move up that one place . . .
December 8, 2010
ABC to XTC
Thanks!
J
November 22, 2010
THE DRAFT
When I first began writing EVERY DEAD THING, I thought that each chapter of the book had to be perfect before I could move on to the next. For that reason, I spent months honing the early chapters, believing that I couldn't proceed to Chapter Two until Chapter One was flawless and unblemished. It took me a long time to realize that, no matter how hard I tried, Chapter One would still be flawed and blemished, because it would always be open to some improvement, however minute. Part of the experience of writing is learning to live with the imperfect nature of the endeavor. In that sense, it's probably good practice to move on to the next chapter while acknowledging that the previous one may still require some work. In the end, even when you're offering it to a publisher or agent, it will STILL require some work. In fact, when it's bound between two covers and presented to the public, the writer's first response to his or her book, upon picking up the finished copy when it arrives in the mail, will probably be, "You know, that chapter could have done with some cuts" or, "Hey, I've repeated the word 'umbilical' twice in two lines."
No two writers write in quite the same way, but all will make their own accommodation with the flawed nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged. I've learned to love the flaws, because in every flaw lies the possibility of improvement. At the moment, THE BURNING SOUL has character names that aren't quite right, or have changed two or three times in the course of the manuscript as I test them out on the page. There is dialogue that bears no relation to the way people might actually speak, but is there solely to enable me to move on to the next scene. There are incidents missing from the plot because they haven't been written yet, as I couldn't figure out quite what they should be, or how they should transpire. I could have beaten myself up for days or weeks trying to wrestle them into some shape, frustrating myself and slowing progress to a crawl, but instead I left them until later. There is nobody looking over my shoulder, and I have long since silenced the grave critic on my shoulder who hindered my writing at the start of my career by picking holes in a manuscript that was already barely held together by threads. Let him have his say later when the book is done. For now, he has nothing of value to offer.
So this week will see the conclusion written, and then the pleasant task of rewriting and editing can begin. I love this part. The preliminary sketch is done, and I can tell the dimensions of the work, and see the shapes upon the page. Now it's a matter of shading, of detailing. Over the months to follow, the book will come to life.
Flawed life, but life nonetheless.
THIS WEEK JOHN READ The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien
The Thing Is . . . by Dave Fanning AND LISTENED TO How They Are by Peter Broderick
A Certain Hostility by Vitesse
October 29, 2010
Punch Brothers
suspect Chris Thile had no idea who I was when I introduced myself after the gig, and was just being
polite, despite the fact that I'd paid a couple of thousand dollars out of my own pocket for the rights to one
Nickel Creek song and one lyric line to be used in 'The Unquiet'. Crumbs, it cost me ten times as much as an
entire verse of T S Eliot. Sigh. Oh well. In his defense, he did look a bit shellshocked after a great
performance, and I struggle with names all the time, especially in those circumstances. He is extraordinarily
gifted, and, in 'This Is the Song', he may well have produced his loveliest work to date. I just don't think I
have a memorable name, or face. Buy the album 'Antifogmatic' - an antifogmatic being, apparently, an
alcoholic drink one has in the morning to steel oneself for a day's work. You learn something new every
day . . . --------------------------------------------------------------------
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October 19, 2010
On Seclusion
Then again, I think that at some point in the creation a book, all writers, and certainly all published writers, need to take time away from the distractions of day-to-day life and do nothing but write. It may be at the start of the process, or in the middle when progress has slowed, or right at the end, when the finish line is in sight and it requires one last concentrated effort to cross the line, but it has to be done. If nothing else, it gives a focus to the work in hand. It can be hard to keep the image of the forest in one's head when you're progressing through it, tree by tree.
Even when I was writing my first book, at a time when I did not have a publisher but did, at least, have an agent who wanted to read it, I can remember taking a week off work in order to finish the draft. I wrote in a rigid kitchen chair at an old table in my bedroom, and I think my back hurt for another week after. I wrote thousands of words every day. I forced myself to stay in that chair and not move until I felt that I really couldn't write any more, until my back was screaming and the words on the computer screen grew fuzzy.
But perhaps that idea of seclusion is merely an extreme example of the regular, low-key seclusion that all writers, whether actual or aspiring, need in order to work. When I'm trying to help people who are struggling to write, overwhelmed by the task that they have set themselves and the other demands on their time - work, husbands, wives, children, friends, dogs - I always tell them to start small. They should snatch ten or fifteen minutes every day, and set an easily attainable goal: 100 words, say, which is not very much at all. They should do this at a time when they can be sure of no other distractions, and I've known people who've started to wake up fifteen minutes earlier in the mornings, before the kids have to be rousted, or before they have to run for the train, and that's their brief period of seclusion. Three days of work in this way will produce about one page of a book, although most people find that the work speeds up as the days go by, and where once they might have produced 100 words, they now produce 150, or 200, or 300.
It helps also to have a particular place in which to work, especially if you have kids, or flatmates, or a demanding spouse. You close the door, or set yourself up at the kitchen table, and you make it clear to them that this is your time, and you have to be left alone. After a while, people come to expect it. Not only does writing become part of your routine, but your writing becomes part of the routine of others.
So seclusion, like most things, is relative, and while absolute seclusion may be ideal - I have one friend who goes to stay in a country house bed and breakfast when he needs to get a lot of writing done, another who runs off to a cottage in the hills, a third who makes use of a retreat house for writers - it's not always possible, or available, or affordable. But every writer has to find his or her own space, both physical and psychological, and to make the best use of it. Three weeks, an hour, fifteen minutes: you take what you can get . . .
This week John read
Sean Connery: The Measure of a Man by Christopher Bray
and listened to
Le Noize by Neil Young
October 12, 2010
News and Stuff
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September 20, 2010
UPCOMING EVENTS in FRANCE
Talk, book signing, and prize-giving
Bookshop l'Escale littéraire
120 Boulevard du Montparnasse, Paris 14 RER B Port Royal
Métro Vavin
September 30 at 7 pm
Talk and book signing
Irish Cultural Center of Paris, 5 Rue des Irlandais, 75005 Paris RER B Luxembourg
Métro Place Monge (M7) or Cardinal Lemoine (M10)
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