The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

by Joël Dicker

Life is a long drop down, Marcus. The most important thing is knowing how to fall.”

“You know, Marcus, I know exactly the type of person you are: a conceited little prick who thinks Montclair is the center of the world. A little like the Europeans thought of themselves in the Middle Ages, before they got on ships and discovered that most of the civilizations across the oceans were more developed than theirs was, which they attempted to hide by massacring the inhabitants. What I mean, Marcus, is that you are a terrific guy, but there’s a good chance you will just fizzle out if you don’t get your ass in gear. Your writing is good. But you have to reevaluate yourself and work much harder. Your problem is that you don’t work hard enough. You’re too easily satisfied.

He continued: “I’m going to give you a simple example. You’re a good boxer. That’s a fact. You know how to fight. But look at you—you only ever measure yourself against that pathetic, skinny kid whom you batter with such smugness that it makes me want to vomit. You fight him only because you know you’re guaranteed to beat him. That makes you a weakling, Marcus. A chicken. A spineless ninny. A nothing, a zero, a bluffer, a waste of space. You’re just a sham. And the worst thing is that you’re perfectly happy with that. Measure yourself against a real opponent! Show some balls! Boxing never lies: Getting into a ring is a very reliable way of finding out your worth.

You could have gone to Harvard, Yale, the whole Poison Ivy League if you’d wanted, but no, you had to come here, because the Lord God gave you a pair of balls so small that you didn’t have the guts to measure yourself against real opponents.

“A piece of writing is never good,” he told me. “There is simply a moment when it is less bad than before.” Between our meetings, I spent hours in my room working and reworking my stories. And that was how I, who had always skimmed through life with a certain ease, I who had always fooled the world, learned to face up to myself.

“Because writing gave meaning to my life. In case you haven’t noticed, life generally doesn’t have any meaning—unless you strive, every God-given day, to provide it with some.

He laughed. “You? A cop? I’ve been watching you for ten minutes, walking around on tiptoes so you don’t get your loafers dirty. And federal agents don’t scream when they see a gun. They get theirs out and shoot everything that moves.”

“Because it’s in you. Like a disease. Because the writer’s disease isn’t an inability to write anymore: it’s being incapable of stopping.”

Yep.

I’ll need more evidence before I take Stern seriously as a suspect. I’m not going to risk my career by interrogating a guy who plays golf with the governor unless I have at least some evidence against him.”

Listening to the car radio on the way from the police headquarters to the prison, I learned that all of Harry’s books had been withdrawn from school libraries throughout most of the country. This was the lowest blow so far. In less than two weeks, Harry had lost everything. He was now censored as an author, spurned as a professor, demonized by an entire nation. Irrespective of the outcome of the investigation and the trial, his name was now sullied forever; no one would ever be able to talk about his works without mentioning the huge controversy surrounding the summer he spent with Nola. This was the intelligentsia’s version of a lethal injection.

All I know is that life is a series of choices, and that you have to keep making them.”

“LEARN TO LOVE YOUR failures, Marcus, because it is your failures that will make you who you are. It is your failures that will give meaning to your victories.”

Life is like a foot race, Marcus: There will always be people who are faster than you, and there will always be those who are slower than you. What matters, in the end, is how you ran your race.”

Writing means allowing your readers to see things they sometimes can’t see. If only orphans wrote books about orphans, we’d never get anywhere. That would mean you’d never be able to write about a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or the Russian Revolution unless you happened to be a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or a witness to the Russian Revolution. You are only Marcus Goldman. And if every writer had to limit his writing to his own experiences, literature would be impoverished and would lose all its meaning. We’re allowed to write about anything that affects us. And no one can judge us for that. We’re writers because we do one thing differently, one thing that everyone around us knows how to do: write. All the nuances reside there.”

“The truth does not change how you feel about someone. That’s the great tragedy of love.”

Actually, the Truth did and does change how I felt and feel about someone, but I also discovered this reaction of mine is indeed rare.