Sunday, October 21, 2007

Love and Lehane, Part I

I do not like genres. I do not like to be pigeon-holed into genres. I don't like a "fix" of genres.

Not resting on genres.

*****

In October of 2003 I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of Andy's Frozen Custard on Campbell Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. I was eating a "turtle"--custard, dark, warm fudge, and salted pecans with a cherry, and listening to NPR. If I looked north out of my windshield, my view was of Dunkin Donuts across a side street. If I looked west, I could see a sun stretched over with thin, angular clouds, like teeth of a jack-o-lantern, sheets of ice in the sky in cloud formation.

Terry Gross introduced Dennis Lehane on the radio, and began to talk with him about his book, "Mystic River." The book wasn't new--this was a repeat interview, but the first time that I had heard it. As is what happens with most interviews on NPR, I don't start listening closely, but I end up in rapt attention.

Unfortunately, since the interview happened four years ago, I can't quote you the interview, but something gripped me and shook hard about this writer. To listen to him talk you're surprised that he comes up with the stories that he does, because he doesn't come from a violent background. His life itself is extremely boring--or, in the case that I now look at it, stable. His stories, though, had me excited enough, interested enough, to go out and buy a $7.99 copy of "Mystic River." I spent the next three weeks with it, and was stunned. I do not frequent the genre sections of bookstores (i.e., mystery and suspense, romance, etc), but here was a genre book right here, one of those books sized for airports and hospitals, something small and fat to read in the diner, books all the same size with the same font on the cover and the only changes were the colors. This mass paperback had turned my head, beat me soundly about the brain, and took names. It didn't read like a writer who was trying to put in a new pool and therefore cranked out a new book.

It read like someone who liked to write.

Gross was replaying the interview with Lehane because Warner Bros was about to release the movie version of the book, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins. The movie was in limited release and therefore not in Springfield right off the bat, so I had the time for the book. I loved the book in that protective way that makes a reader leary of anyone making a movie into it, much like I did "The Hours." But like "The Hours," "Mystic River" is one perfect art as a book and one perfect art as a movie. They are like two separate stories, but they share the same story.

And so the affair began, even though I just thought of it as an experience beginning and ending with "Mystic River."

********

About a week ago I was wolfing down lunch at work and brought up SF Gate to skim between bites of sandwich. The front page had Mick LaSalle's teaser for his review on "Gone Baby Gone," and from the teaser he seemed to like it...from my experience it seems rare that The New Yorker and San Francisco Chronicle film critics like much of anything. But Mick was very nearly gushing over the thing, talking about how Ben has proved himself since Gigli with this film, "but then," says LaSalle, "he's got a great story to work with." Affleck co-wrote the screenplay, but the book it is based on is none other than the work of Dennis LeHane.

You know what I did that night.

I walked down to Borders and picked up "Gone Baby Gone." "Dutch" will have to wait for the moment. I dug out the music I listened to then. I can't go to Andy's, but I can watch the sun set in an October sky and turn the pages and so far, this is yet another beauty...

To be continued, dear reader, after another brief affair.

2 comments:

dkearns72 said...

I actually admit to being a genre hound, but I havent really been able to do that in the last few years. There have only been a few times I have been able to pick up books and read. And you've nailed the only author who I stayed up late at night and stole time for to actually read their stuff since 2003. Actually, it was even during some of the roughest times of adapting to my new life situation that I ploghed through everything he wrote.

"Mystic River" kicked my ass in a serious way. I wasnt the same for a couple of weeks after finishing it. Lehane has a powerful vision of the world we live in. Not necessarily a comforting vision either.

I'm really looking forward to your further commentary.

Jo Jardin said...

Oooohhhh, I know what you mean about Lehane about the vision...and yet I am amazed that he can still burn a dead body or disgust with an even, warm brushstroke of determined hope. The color comes out different in every situation, but I think the paint is the same color, just a different chemical reaction.

The second book is just as plain and enriched as I found my first read of him to be...but more on that later...I'm looking forward to writing about him and watching the movie just as much as you are to reading my thoughts on him.

Have you checked out his Wikipedia? Some great stuff from there is that he still lives in Boston, his brother is an actor, and he won't write the screenplays for his books-to-movies because he "doesn't want to operate on his own child."

Good stuff... :)