9mm: An interview with James Lee Burke

Welcome to the latest instalment in Crime Watch's ongoing series of author interviews; 9mm - 9 Murder Mystery questions put to a variety of New Zealand and international crime, thriller, and mystery authors.

I'm fortunate enough to get to interview a lot of fantastic crime fiction authors, well-known and lesser-known - sometimes directly for Crime Watch, and sometimes for some of the various great newspapers and magazines I write for (eg the Weekend Herald, Good Reading, etc).

Since I started the 9mm series with Lee Child almost seven months ago, I've made sure that every interview I do with every author, whether in-person or over the phone or Internet, includes the nine 9mm questions, in amongst whatever else I'm interviewing them about (eg their latest book, their particular characters, their visits to New Zealand etc). I've got to say, all the authors have been incredibly generous with their time, and welcoming of the 9mm questions, so I hope that you all enjoy seeing how different authors answer the questions each time.

Today, for the 38th instalment of 9mm (how quickly the series has grown), I thought I would share with you the 9mm part of the interview I did with MWA Grandmaster and mystery writing maestro James Lee Burke for a feature in the Weekend Herald, in the lead-up to the release of his latest excellent Robicheaux tale, THE GLASS RAINBOW.

Getting to interview Burke was a real privilege, and a highlight of what has been a tremendous year for me, on the crime fiction reading and interviewing front. You can read my Crime Fiction Alphabet post on James Lee Burke here. And my Weekend Herald feature here.

To give you a sense of Burke, as you read his answers, here's a paragraph from my Herald feature, describing his demeanour during our interview:

• "Throughout, the 73-year-old laughs easily and often, almost explosively at times. He is unfailing polite, yet not at all stuffy or formal. He answers the phone with a jovial "Is this New Zealand calling?" then tells me to call him "Jim". Down-to-earth and humble, his soft-spoken manner and measured cadence belie some strident opinions when it comes to several things he cares deeply about, including the environment, "people of humble origin", and the purpose and importance of art."

But now, James Lee Burke stares down the barrel of 9mm.

The Crime Watch 9mm Author Interview: James Lee Burke

Who is your favourite recurring crime fiction hero/detective?
I don’t make much distinction between genres. I think literary art is literary art, or it’s not. I think among American crime writers over the years the best was James M. Cain. There’s no question about it in my mind, he was a very good writer.

What was the very first book you remember reading and really loving, and why? The Hardy Boys - it was great to read those books. The adventure, the mystery - being able to identify with young boys who were solving great mysteries.

Before your debut crime novel, what else had you written (if anything); unpublished manuscripts, short stories, articles?
Well, I’ve been a published novelist since, oh, many years ago. I finished my first published novel, I finished writing it, in 1960, HALF OF PARADISE. So I’ve been doing it for over 50 years. I’d published short stories [before that].

Outside of writing, and touring and promotional commitments, what do you really like to do, leisure and activity-wise?
Fly fishing in Montana. We live on some property that tries to be a ranch, and that keeps me very busy. Montana is a grand place, and Louisiana is too.

What is one thing that visitors to your hometown should do, that isn't in the tourist brochures, or perhaps they wouldn’t initially consider? Something the locals would recommend?
Well, there are two places we identify as home. In New Iberia I think people would find it a very hospitable place, wonderful place, and the ambience is just lovely. Of course it’s on the Gulf, which is having terrible problems right now. Montana where we live in the Northern Rockies is just as good as the earth gets. It’s just absolutely as good as the earth gets. Much of it is like the earth was on the first day of creation, it’s just beautiful.

If your life was a movie, which actor could you see playing you?
Oh, I’d like to play a cotton bowl, or a crawfish. I’ve never thought about it (laughing). I wouldn’t visit a fate like that on my worst enemy [playing Jim Burke]

--- Maybe Tommy Lee Jones?

I don’t think anybody is going to be lining up to play me in a film (laughing).

Of your books, which is your favourite, and why?
Well, I’ve always felt that about every book I wrote, but the one that obviously, at least in my mind, that’s most important, would be RAIN GODS. RAIN GODS is the best book I’ve written.

And the book that allowed me to write full-time, BLACK CHERRY BLUES - it won the Edgar in 1989, and it marked the first large commercial success that I had, and it allowed me to work fulltime as a novelist. I wrote for many years and held other jobs at the same time. It’s not easy to do sometimes.

What was your initial reaction, and how did you celebrate, when you were first accepted for publication? Or when you first saw your debut story in book form on a bookseller’s shelf?
Oh, elation, because it took me four years for it [HALF OF PARADISE] to find a publisher. I always wrote more easily than I published, but when I published that book, it was a glorious moment. And my first review was a six-column banner review in the New York Times Review of Books, and so it’s been downhill ever since (laughing). But it was a great review, and the man who reviewed me was Wirt Williams, he wrote the book ADA DALLAS [one of three of his books nominated for a Pulitzer Prize], he’s from Louisiana, and he was a very nice gentleman. I didn’t know him them, but I came to know him later. He compared my work to, get this, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Camus, and Sartra. I thought, hey, that’s pretty nice (laughing).

I thought all my reviews would be like that, and then right after that review, the New York Herald-Tribune gave me maybe the second worst review I ever received, the guy just tore it apart. I tried to remember a lesson that Ernest Hemingway imparted to young writers, when he said ‘If you believe the critics when they say you’re good, you have to believe them when they say you’re bad’.

What is the strangest or most unusual or memorable experience you have had at a book signing, author event, or literary festival?
Well, it’s always been a great experience. The great benefit of being a professional writer - and I’m sure you have this experience yourself as a professional writer, I was a newspaper man myself - is that you are always around intelligent people. And it’s always an enormous pleasure to go, say, to a book convention or a book festival. And to have people came to, in effect, praise your work, and to want to hear you read aloud to them, and talk about how you wrote the book, it’s just an enormous compliment.

After many years of working hard at it, it is of course a great sense of accomplishment to feel that maybe you’ve brought some degree of pleasure to others. Not many people have the chance to experience that reciprocity in their work. I mean, most people fight with their job, but to me writing is just the perfect life, always has been. I can’t think of a better life - I never wanted to be anything else other than a writer.

Thank you James (Jim) Lee Burke. We really appreciate you taking the time to answer the 9mm questions.

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So what do you think of this 9mm interview? Have you read any of James Lee Burke's books - the Robicheaux series or others? Which do you think is his best? Have you seen the films that have been made from his Robicheuax series (Alec Baldwin as Robicheaux in Heaven's Prisoners, Tommy Lee Jones in Into the Electric Mist)? I'd love to read your comments. Please share your thoughts.

Philosopher of Crime: my feature on James Lee Burke

As I mentioned earlier, the Weekend Herald (New Zealand's biggest newspaper) have now kindly allowed me to republish any articles I have or will write for them, online. So today I am sharing my 1500-word feature on mystery writing maestro James Lee Burke, which was in the features section of the Canvas magazine (the glossy lifestyle supplement) in last weekend's edition.

PHILOSOPHER OF CRIME
James Lee Burke talks to CRAIG SISTERSON about artistry in crime writing, speaking for those with no voice, and the central issue of modern times

ANY TRUE artist, whatever their creative medium, needs both humility and vanity, says legendary American novelist James Lee Burke. “Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity,” he adds, his mild Southern accent reverberating down the phone line from his “property that tries to be a ranch” just outside Missoula, Montana. Burke and his wife of fifty years, Pearl, now split their time between Missoula and New Iberia in Louisiana, the lush setting of Burke’s evocative and award-winning crime novels starring aging detective Dave Robicheaux.

Burke’s eighteenth and latest Robicheaux novel, The Glass Rainbow (released in New Zealand next week), is ostensibly the reason for our interview, but just like his rich and layered tales themselves, my conversation with Burke ends up being a bit deeper and more philosophical, and laced with history, politics, social commentary, and literary references. Throughout, the 73-year-old laughs easily and often, almost explosively at times. He is unfailing polite, yet not at all stuffy or formal. He answers the phone with a jovial “Is this New Zealand calling?” then tells me to call him “Jim”. Down-to-earth and humble, his soft-spoken manner and measured cadence belie some strident opinions when it comes to several things he cares deeply about, including the environment, “people of humble origin”, and the purpose and importance of art.

The humility a writer must have is just recognition that their artistic talent is a gift, says Burke. “All good art has its origins I believe in some source outside oneself. And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it’s there for a reason, and that’s to make the world a better place.” The greatest enemy of art is self-absorption and ego, continues Burke. Arrogance and pride are “a cancer”, and if an artist “begins to think of himself as someone who in effect went out and acquired the talent” rather than appreciating it for the gift it is, then they are heading for a fall. However, an artist must have faith in their talent, and feel compelled to share something important with the wider world. “It’s a kind of vanity,” says Burke. “George Orwell once said writers write because they want to set history straight. And that’s the emotion the writer feels, as though he is seeing reality in a perfectly accurate way, and he feels an obsession to communicate his vision.”

Some may question a crime writer, even one as acclaimed as Burke, talking about art and making the world a better place. But anyone who’s read his novels knows that they have a fair bit more to say, beneath the page-turning action, than your typical easy-reading ‘airport thriller’. “I don’t make much distinction between genres,” he says. “I think literary art is literary art, or it’s not. Writing is either good or bad.”

Burke wanted to be a writer from an early age. Born in Houston and growing up on the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast, the first books he remembers reading and really loving were crime novels; The Hardy Boys series. It was the “adventure, the mystery, and being able to identify with young boys who were solving great crimes” that held such great appeal, he recalls with a fond chuckle. Burke shared a youthful passion for words and storytelling with his first cousin Andre DuBus, and I hear a note of pride in his voice as he notes they both ended up being writers all of their lives. While Burke has published 30 more books since his 1965 debut Half of Paradise (which took several years to find a publisher), won two Edgar Awards (the ‘Oscars’ of crime writing), had his fourth novel The Lost Get Back Boogie rejected a record 111 times over nine years then get nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and last year the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, his late cousin was pretty talented too. Dubus is considered one of the best American short story writers of the 20th century.

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'The story, the great drama, is around us all the time, it's always there. It's a matter of seeing it.'

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Burke has also lived a full and fascinating life away from the page; a life he says has truly enriched his writing. “Everything I was doing all the time in some way I thought of as translating into my art,” he says. “When I was a social worker in Los Angeles, I knew that all these people I was seeing - convicts, street people, migrant farm workers, skid row derelicts - were all going to become players later in my work. I learned an enormous amount about the other America, one that we don’t recognise. It was the same in other jobs.” For Burke those other jobs included working as a landman for the Sinclair Oil Company, as a pipeliner, land surveyor, newspaper reporter, college English professor, clerk for the Louisiana Employment Service, and instructor in the US Job Corps. “The story, the great drama, is around us all the time, it’s always there. It’s a matter of seeing it.”

You could say there are three main threads running through Burke’s various careers: working on the land (as an oil man and surveyor); working with words (as a journalist, English professor, and novelist); and working with those less fortunate (his social work and employment-related roles). Fans of his crime novels will notice clear similarities with issues and themes consistently highlighted through his writing, especially when it comes to man’s relationship with land and resources, and the stark reality of life for those at the lower end of the economic and social spectrum. When I ask Burke whether he consciously incorporated such issues into his storytelling, or whether they just naturally emerged given his background, he doesn’t hesitate. “It was always a conscious attempt to give voice to those who have none,” he says. “I believe that’s what the artist does. He tries to give voice to those who have none.”

Burke’s love for the land is also clear from both his writing and life away from the page. “Where we live in the Northern Rockies is just as good as the earth gets,” he says. “Much of it is like the earth was on the first day of creation, it’s just beautiful.” He is a keen outdoorsman, particularly enjoying fly-fishing. With his novels, Burke is renowned for a masterful touch for his Louisiana, Texas, and Montana settings. While other crime writers try to immediately grab readers’ attention with action-based hooks, in The Glass Rainbow Burke takes the entire first page to describe a room in a Mississippi river town, complete with ventilated storm shutters “slatted with a pink glow, as soft and filtered and cool in color as the spring sunrise can be”.

From there, Burke’s latest book evolves into an intricate tale involving a series of depraved murders, a convict-turned celebrity writer, some old-money Louisiana families with plenty of skeletons in their closets, and hired mercenaries. Septuagenarian investigator Dave Robicheaux (picture a slightly warmer and more connected but no less tough version of Clint Eastwood’s aging hero in Gran Torino) has his hands full trying to dig for the truth, keep his hulking sidekick Clete Purcel out of jail, protect his enamoured daughter Alafair from two older men with murky motives, and deal with nagging visions of his own mortality.

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'And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.'

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Reviews of Burke’s writing often contain words like lyrical, evocative, lush, and sensuous. The page-turning plots and compelling characters, such as Robicheaux, Clete, and strong-willed Alafair (named after Burke’s own daughter, who has herself become an acclaimed mystery novelist) are also impressive, but almost secondary. When I ask what in particular is so special about the regions where he sets his books, Burke notes “the past is always visible” in such places, which are “emblematic of the larger story”. Moreover, “Louisiana is at the centre, in a peculiar way, as is Montana, with the central issue of the 20th and the early 21st century, and that is energy and minerals”. For art to survive, it has to represent a larger story than a regional one, says Burke, and the era we’re in is all about the use and pursuit of natural resources. “It’s been the issue since 1914, and that’s a larger story. I think we’re in some denial about that. You guys went into Gallipoli in 1915 and that was the issue. The Kiwis that the British used for cannon fodder in the Dardanelles, the issue was natural resources. It was oil.” More recently, this central issue has led to the creation of “an antagonism between Christendom and the Islamic World that is going to be with us for decades”.

For decades James Lee Burke has been touching on such larger issues through the prism of crime fiction. As an artist, he’s had something important to say, and found a way to say it that has entranced readers around the globe. And like a true artist, he is grateful for his gift. “Most people fight with their job, but to me writing is just the perfect life, always has been. I can’t think of a better life.”

The Glass Rainbow (Orion, $38.99)

This feature article was first published in the Canvas magazine of the Weekend Herald on Saturday 31 July 2010, and is reprinted here with permission.

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So what do you think of my feature article on James Lee Burke? Of the Weekend Herald allowing me to share my past and future features for them, with you all her on Crime Watch? Have you read any of Burke's Robicheux novels? Or his other acclaimed works? Can crime writing be artistic? Thoughts and comments welcome.

My TWO articles in the Canvas magazine of today's Weekend Herald (New Zealand's biggest newspaper)

It was certainly a nice way to start what is a lovely blue-skied winter weekend here in Auckland, by popping out to the dairy (our term for a convenience store, for those with a puzzled expression on their faces) to pick up the weekend newspaper.

After a bit of a hiatus, I've started writing author features for the Weekend Herald (the weekend edition of the largest-circulation newspaper in New Zealand) again. In fact, I've got several features coming out over the next few weeks. It's great to see crime fiction getting decent coverage in such an important Kiwi newspaper - UK-based Stephen Jewell also regularly writes some great crime fiction author interviews for the Canvas magazine (the glossy lifestyle etc supplement to the Weekend Herald that includes the books section).

I've also started with a bit of a bang. In this weekend's Canvas, I have TWO articles; a large feature on mystery maestro James Lee Burke (pictured above), and a book review of THE FALLEN, the debut thriller from nascent Kiwi crime writer Ben Sanders, a 20-year-old Auckland engineering student, that is released this coming week.

If you're in the northern part of New Zealand, I hope you grab a copy of the Weekend Herald and have a read. Let me know what you think. It was an absolute privilege to interview James Lee Burke, and I only help my feature, "Philosopher of Crime" does the old master justice.

As for those of you outside of the Herald's distribution area, as I noted recently thanks to the generosity of Linda Herrick, the Books Editor for the Herald, I am now able to republish my Canvas magazine articles on Crime Watch (as its a glossy supplement, the articles usually aren't put online by the Herald). As such, I will republish the full James Lee Burke feature "Philosopher of Crime" here later this week. In the meantime, to give you taste, here's a short snippet from my story:

"Burke’s eighteenth and latest Robicheaux novel, The Glass Rainbow (released in New Zealand next week), is ostensibly the reason for our interview, but just like his rich and layered tales themselves, my conversation with Burke ends up being a bit deeper and more philosophical, and laced with history, politics, social commentary, and literary references.

Throughout, the 73-year-old laughs easily and often, almost explosively at times. He is unfailing polite, yet not at all stuffy or formal. He answers the phone with a jovial “Is this New Zealand calling?” then tells me to call him “Jim”. Down-to-earth and humble, his soft-spoken manner and measured cadence belie some strident opinions when it comes to several things he cares deeply about, including the environment, “people of humble origin”, and the purpose and importance of art."

As for my review of Ben Sanders' debut, THE FALLEN, I really enjoyed his first Sean Devereaux tale. Regardless of his age, it's very slick and well-written crime, with some very nice touches throughout. Hopefully readers here will give it a go; I think they'll be pleased if they do.

You can read a synopsis/blurb for THE FALLEN here.

As with the James Lee Burke feature, I will republish my Weekend Herald review of THE FALLEN online here on Crime Watch later this coming week.

In the meantime, here's my concluding comment from the 500+ word review: "The young man from the North Shore has added to the mounting evidence that New Zealand can produce native, compelling crime fiction to match the international offerings readers buy and enjoy in droves".

Come on - did any of you really expect me to write a review of a well-written Kiwi crime novel for the biggest newspaper in the country (who rarely do such longer reviews of crime titles - usually just doing snippet round-ups) without getting in a comment about the state of the genre here in general? I couldn't resist, especially since it's 100 % true.

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So, what do you think of my double-feature, so to speak, in Canvas/The Weekend Herald today? Are you a James Lee Burke fan? Do you like crime writers who layer in more than just fast-moving plot and action? Do you like the sound of THE FALLEN? Is Kiwi crime really on the rise, or am I just deluded? I'd love to read what you think. Please share your thoughts.