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Cornelius
"Con"Lehane Interview Conducted Writers are fascinating people. Most of them have had real-life experiences that the rest of us just dream about, and I guess that most of them draw on that experience to tell their stories. The writers that we really enjoy reading put all the emotion and passion they've ever felt in their novels. Cornelius Lehane is one of those fascinating people. "Beware the Solitary Drinker" is his first published book...but if you are a mystery fan, you will want to keep your eye on him. I had the opportunity to ask him a few questions about his life and his writing... Bev: Mr. Lehane, you have certainly had a varied and colorful career...everything from bartender to college professor. Could you give us a biography? ....the highlights of your life and accomplishments. Con: In 50 words or less? The big highlight is my kids, Paddy who's 16, and Jimmy about to be 14. They taught me what's really important in life. My father was a gardener and my mother a domestic worker. I grew up on private estates and began working in the gardens during the summers with my father when I was 10 or 11. I don't know why I wanted to do that. I didn't have to, and I didn't like working very much. I think I liked being around the workers. During this time, my mother would work as a cook or waitress, laundress or housekeeper, but most of the time she was home and I was around my family probably more than most people growing up. This was all around Fairfield County, Connecticut, in the suburbs of New York City. I was a poor student, though because of my mother's strong-willed ambition for me, I attended a Jesuit College Prep School and then Marquette University, where I continued to be a fair to lousy student. Reading Nelson Algren helped me decide to write fiction. I also went to school in the '60s and like the Brecht poem "came upon men in revolt and revolted with them." That's a bit of a paraphrase even though I put it in quotes. Some version of those two things: writing and revolting, combined with occasional bouts of rambling, gambling, and staying out late at night pretty much cover my biography up till I got married and had kids and this brings us back to where I began this.
Bev: Which of your many jobs did you enjoy most, and why? Con: This is a question I never thought much about. For the most part, I thought of work as a necessary evil that got in the way of my writing. Other than this, I liked teaching, especially acting as adviser to the college newspaper. It was the one teaching activity in which the students really did learn from their mistakes. What I liked best about bartending was the people I worked with -- the bartenders, waiters, waitresses. Just about always, there was a kind of togetherness that I really liked. And, I also like union organizing, though it was tough work. I admired the courage of the workers who'd stand up for themselves and their fellow workers, despite the risks.
Bev: What do you read for recreation? Who are your favorite authors? Con: I read all kinds of fiction and have a great many favorite authors and favorite books. Lately, I've been reading some contemporary stuff: The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips, The White Butterfly, another really well-done Walter Mosley book. I also really like George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane. This fall, I read three books I reviewed for Mystery Scene. At the moment, I'm reading a Simenon book. I'd have to say Georges Simenon is one of my all-time favorite writers, along with Nelson Algren, Dickens, Tolstoy... I could go on. Not long ago, I read David Goodis's Shoot the Piano Player, which I thought was great. I also like Jim Thompson. If there's a bias here, it seems to be toward male writers, though I'm about to read Irene Marcuse's Death of an Amiable Child and Danuta Rhea's Bleak Water.
Bev: Who or what has been the greatest influence on your decision to be a writer? Con: I read Nelson Algren's The Man With the Golden Arm when I was just about finishing up college. The book struck a chord with me in a way no other book ever did. I knew what he was writing as well as I knew my own life and like St Paul's epiphany, I was struck by the idea -- absolutely beyond belief up to that point in my life--that I could write a novel. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Simenon were later influences.
Bev: What gave you the idea for "Beware the Solitary Drinker?" Con: I began thinking about writing a mystery when I was trying -- unsuccessfully, it turned out -- to find a publisher for my first novel. McNulty came about as a kind of composite of bartenders I'd known over the years -- especially in New York. There was a kind of bartender's code and New York working class sensibility around the people I knew that I thought it would be great to try to capture. Then there's this intangible thing that led me to want to write novels and stories in the first place. I still don't know what it is, but it's the same drive for me whether it's to write "serious" literature or crime fiction. Crime fiction is serious literature to me.
Bev: Is your reluctant sleuth, Brian McNulty autobiographical at all? Tell us about developing this character. Con: I think I answered this more or less in the last question. In one way, McNulty is not at all autobiographical. In another way -- in the Stanislavsky sense of true emotion in imaginary circumstances -- he probably has a lot of my sensibility about things.
Bev: You have been a union organizer, but Brian is a dedicated anti-union man. How did you get into his head for that switch in thinking? Con: Brian is not anti-union; that was a typo on the blurb that went out on the cover of the ARCS and was quickly corrected at my request. Brian is a strong believer in unions but opposed to the absence of a militant left leadership in many unions, a legacy of the McCarthy era. He believes workers deserve strong, democratic unions and is trying to challenge the leadership of the fictional union he belongs to by creating a rank-and-file movement for union democracy. This comes out a bit more in later books.
Bev: How long did it take you to write this book? Con: I wrote the book a long time ago, put it aside, wrote another one, then came back to it. When Francois Guerif at Rivages/Noir agreed to read it and then to publish it, I did another revision. Then, when Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press expressed an interest, we had another discussion of the book and another substantial revision, actually I went through it more than once with Barbara. So in this age of poorly edited books, Beware has been quite fortunate to have two really good ones and has, therefore, taken a long time to write.
Bev: Did you have any particular plotting problems with this story? Con: I think I had fewer plotting problems with this book than with others. I made many changes through Lord knows how many drafts but the plot stayed pretty much the same.
Bev: Tell us what other writing projects you are working on. Do you have plans for Brian as the protagonist in another story? Con: I've pretty much finished a second Brian McNulty book and I'm doing a second draft of a third book. My work on this third book has been stalled while I did the revisions on the first one and then went through the second one again in preparation for sending it out. I'm really anxious to get back to the third book, and I'm tossing some ideas for a fourth book around in day dreams.
Bev: What's your advice for budding authors? Con: To write. To just keep at it. Even though I've had only a tiny taste of being a published writer after a very long time of working at my craft, I know in my heart that the really great thing is being able to write. I hope budding authors can find enough resolve in themselves to keep writing, if this is what they believe they should do, without needing affirmation from outside themselves. My father always told me that I should keep at whatever it was I wanted. I know now what great advice it really was. It's very hard to keep going if you don't get some affirmation, but that's what you do, you keep at it.
Bev: Do you have any other thoughts you would like to share with us? Con: I don't think so. I'm really thrilled to be part of the mystery community and gratified that people like you take the time to help readers get to know enough about authors and books so they can decide what they wish to read. There are so many books that it's very hard to decide what to read. I think this type of forum is really great for readers and writers. So I thank you very much for this opportunity.
Bev: Con, thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your work, especially the new one about Brian McNulty. Beware the Solitary Drinker was such a refreshing change from the usual mystery. Good luck with your future writing! Book
Review Brian McNulty, at forty years old, is the night bartender at Oscar's on New York's Upper West Side. Brian is familiar with all the regulars who drink at Oscar's, but like good bartenders everywhere, he knows that people covet their privacy, and when you dig into their lives you may find things that are better left hidden. When the beautiful, quasi-innocent Angelina shows up, Oscar's and Brian are changed forever. Angelina is seduced by the glitter that is New York. She stays at Brian's apartment in a sexless friendship, but has a succession of lovers whom she meets at bars. She ends up murdered and another unlikely soul is charged with killing her. Angelina's sister, Janet, shows up and asks Brian to help find the real killer. Lehane has written a lively, colorful story of New York's seamy side with booze, drugs and sex in a culture with unwritten rules. His plotting is flawless; the characters believable and likable, and the setting feels like the real New York. Brian McNulty is an appealing hero, and the more he digs into Angelina's life, the closer he gets to the truth--and becoming another victim. Beware The Solitary Drinker is Con Lehane's first novel, but it is a can't-put-down, exciting read. I hope he has more Brian McNulty adventures up his sleeve. Lehane is an author to watch for. For past Have You Heard Interviews, Click Here © MyShelf.Com. All Rights Reserved |