Mystic River

Interviews & Essays

Dennis Lehane: It's always been my intention to try different things, and Mystic River, in one form or another, had been rattling around in my head for about five years when I decided to put some of it down on paper. As for being burned-out, that's a fair question, and I'd say the characters burned out on me more than I burned out on them. If you consider that in five books, Patrick and Angie have: a.) Gone head-to-head with two lethal street gangs; b.) Survived eight major gun battles; c.) Battled three serial killers; d.) Been forcibly ejected from a speeding car (Patrick); e.) Been shot in the stomach (Angie); f.) Shot in the chest (Patrick); g.) Killed four people apiece; and h.) Each suffered bouts of severe, clinical depression...then one begins to question the believability-factor, even in a genre in which a rather large suspension of disbelief is a prerequisite. Also, Patrick and Angie were just flat-out wiped by what I'd put them through and told me they wanted a vacation. A long one. Preferably in the Carribean. So off they went.

B&N.com: Did you, at any point, feel pressured to stick with what has worked for you in the past? Have you been made to feel that you're taking a commercial risk in trying something as different as Mystic River?

DL: I don't think my publisher was exactly ecstatic that I was branching out just when the series seemed to have found an audience, and most fans I heard from were certainly loud and clear about how little they wanted me to put Patrick and Angie on ice even for a little while. Still, no one said, "Don't do it," so I didn't ultimately feel any pressure from those quarters. I did feel some from myself, though. I kept thinking, "I can write another Patrick/Angie book pretty easily, so why take on a whole new cast and jump from first-person voice to third and risk falling flat on my face and losing two years of my life to write something I'm not sure I can finish and I'm not sure is any good in the first place?" And the answer, essentially, lay in the question -- because of the challenge of creating a new cast; because it was a risk; and because I might fail. In a creative sense, I think if you back down from those types of challenges, then you're artistically dead. At the very least, you become boring as all hell.

B&N.com: While reading Mystic River, I had the sense that you were stretching yourself more than ever before, deliberately setting yourself larger artistic challenges. How satisfied are you with the finished product?

DL: When I was in grad school, a professor pointed out that I was a far bigger fan of books that failed but failed in grand fashion than I was of safe, well-executed "gems." I'm just not a big fan of books that play safe or authors who seem to have drawn up an artistic schematic that they follow, to the letter, every time out of the box. So with Mystic River, I knew that the one thing I could absolutely not allow myself to produce was a book that was identical to a Patrick/Angie book in all respects except the names of the characters. And I wanted to write something that felt epic -- if not in length, at least in range of emotion and event. And anytime you attempt something epic, your odds of tanking are much higher than those of succeeding. But then I thought, Oh, why the hell not?

As for how satisfied I am, I'd say I'm pretty happy with it. But I won't truly know how I feel for a few years. It takes that long to get some distance.

B&N.com: All of your work, including your new novel, is notable for its sense of place, its evocation of the working class neighborhoods that helped shape the characters' lives. Does the East Buckingham of Mystic River have a real-life equivalent?

DL: East Buckingham is a mishmash of several Boston neighborhoods -- Dorchester, where I grew up, and then Charlestown, South Boston, and Brighton. I lived away from Boston for eight years, and when I returned in 1993, the neighborhoods I knew best were beginning to face the assault of gentrification. As time passed, the assualt grew stronger and far more definite, and I began to believe that the whole concept of the northeastern urban enclave was an endangered species, for reasons both good and bad. And that idea informed the writing of the book.

B&N.com: Mystic River ends with a sense of unfinished business between two of the central characters, Sean Devine and Jimmy Marcus. Are you going to leave things in this open-ended state, or would you consider picking up Sean and Jimmy's story at some point in the future?

DL: I think Jimmy and Sean's stories have been told. Yes, there are some questions at the end, but the pertinent ones have been answered. I can see them coming back in a limited capacity, however-mentioned or seen in passing -- when I do the next East Buckingham book, whenever that should be. (Of course, that's how I feel now. In two or three years, I might feel the opposite. We'll see.)

B&N.com: Let's talk a bit about other forms you've worked in. I've read that you consider yourself "a short story writer who fell into writing novels." Have you written much short fiction? Does the short form continue to attract you?

DL: My career is such an accident. That's what I meant when I said I "fell" into writing novels. And everything happened so wonderfully fast that I often find myself far more in kinship with unpublished, struggling writers than I do with published, successful ones, if only because it often seems like a matter of months -- I swear to God -- since I was parking cars. To put it in perspective, five years ago I was ducking calls from collection agencies and now I own a house. Given the working class world I come from, that sort of economic ascent still seems a bit surreal. I love short stories. I steeped myself in them through my late teens and most of my twenties. But it's a brutal form to master, and while I love it, I'm not sure I mastered it, ultimately. Certainly not to the degree that geniuses of the form like Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Joyce Carol Oates, and Alice Munro have. Quite by accident, though, I discovered a comfort level with novels that surprised me, and while it took me several years to come to terms with the idea, I think that I'm a better novelist than I am a short story writer. I still play with them, though. I write probably one a year and keep them to myself. The one that I did publish ("Running Out of Dog"), I did so because I felt it worked as a cohesive piece, where my others tend to be a bit messier and less audience friendly.

B&N.com: How about movies? You wrote and directed a film I've never had a chance to see called Neighborhoods. Was directing a movie a good experience for you? Do you ever think about adapting and directing one of your own books?

DL: Very few people saw Neighborhoods, so don't feel bad. It never found a distributor, so it played a few small festivals and art houses and that was it. I enjoyed directing and I could see doing it again, but I didn't love it the way I love writing novels, so there's no pressing desire to hop back into the director's chair anytime soon. I'm extravagantly lucky to be paid to do what I love, what I'd do for free, and so that's my primary concentration for the rest of my life, really.

B&N.com: As a novelist, do you feel committed to writing crime fiction, or are you interested in working with other genres or modes of storytelling?

DL: I'm not sure if the term "crime fiction" is as viable as it once was. So many writers working in the form today -- James Crumley, James Ellroy, Minette Walters, George Pelecanos, Daniel Woodrell, S. J. Rozan, to name just a few -- are working at such an audacious level of artistry that their work can stand alongside, if not above, so many authors working in the "literary" genre. The stigma that used to be attached to the "crime" genre seems almost nonexistent these days except in a few, stray microscopic quarters, and no one listens to the voices in those quarters except the voices themselves. So I don't feel any desire to write my books with an eye on how they'll be categorized because any worthwhile categorizations won't be applied until long after I'm dead.

B&N.com: This is not exactly an original question, but I really would like to know what writers -- in or out of the crime genre -- influenced you most deeply. And while we're on the subject, what writers do you read for pleasure these days?

DL: The most influential novel I've ever read was The Wanderers by Richard Price, which I read for the first time when I was 14. I can't adequately describe the effect of that book on me, but it changed everything. For the very first time in my life, I read a book in which the characters resembled and spoke like people I knew. And I felt freed because of it: from that point on, I knew for certain that it was okay to write about the world I came from. And Price continues to amaze me. I can't think of a better novel published in the '90s than Clockers. It's the book I honestly think Dosteyvsky would have written if he were living in our times. Beyond Price, I'd say Graham Greene was a big influence, as was Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Elmore Leonard, Robert Parker, Pete Dexter, William Kennedy, Donald Westlake's "Richard Stark" book, and (don't ask, it's too complicated to explain) Edith Wharton and Walker Percy.

As for writers I enjoy but can't trace any "influence" to, I'd start with the South American magic realists like Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende and move on to Fitzgerald, John Irving, Alexandre Dumas, Toni Morrison, Martin Amis, Tim O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, and Marguerite Duras just for starters.

The best books I've read recently were Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee, which absolutely devastated me, and Buffalo Soldiers by Robert O'Conner, which is the best first novel I've read since, well, The Wanderers probably.

B&N.com: Now that this big new book is behind you, do you have any sense of what you'll be doing in the immediate future? More Kenzie/Gennaro novels? Or something as ambitious -- and unexpected -- as Mystic River?

DL: I wish I knew. I've got some characters in my head who are just starting to stretch and stir and knock on the door, but as for what kind of novel they'll inhabit -- Kenzie/Gennaro or something else -- we'll just have to see. I wish I had a better answer because it would probably make me seem like I know what I'm doing, but, sadly, I don't. (Bill Sheehan)