Harlan Coben: By the Book

[New York Times, 20 march 2014]

The author of “Missing You” and “Tell No One” says most of his classmates probably remember him “more for the basketball I was dribbling than the book I may have been carrying.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

Anna Quindlen’s “Still Life With Bread Crumbs,” an advance copy of Ayelet Waldman’s “Love and Treasure” and “The Stack and Tilt Swing,” by Michael Bennett and Andy Plummer. Anna is one of my first and most insightful readers. The only reason I’m behind on reading her latest is that family members keep stealing it from me. Ayelet is always worth a read and I hear her latest is her best. “Stack and Tilt” is a manual about how to swing a golf club, something I do often and terribly. I made the mistake of taking up golf late in life. I would have been better served taking up grinding glass shards into my eyes or removing my internal organs with a grapefruit spoon.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?

Philip Roth. Yes, it’s an unsurprising choice, what with me being Jewish, born in Newark, shiksa-obsessed. . . . Wait, what? You also asked for a favorite novelist writing today, but since Roth’s most recent book, “Nemesis” (the first of his that made me cry), came out only three years ago, I will still respectfully hold out hope for another while not indicating any dissatisfaction or lack of understanding about his decision to retire.

Sell us on your favorite overlooked or underappreciated writer.

There are, of course, an overwhelming number of overlooked writers. Any successful writer who doesn’t admit that luck played a part in their success is either lying or delusional. I will, however, make the case for Elissa Schappell. While I loathe being labeled politically correct, part of the reason I’m picking her and her sublime short story collection “Blueprints for Building Better Girls” is that it is yet another example of our destructive desire to label things in a manner that often does a tremendous disservice to the talent. In this case, that label is “women’s fiction,” whatever that means, as though fiction should be gender-specific, even though this is my favorite short story collection in recent memory.

What are your literary guilty pleasures? Do you have a favorite genre?

I feel guilty about fatty desserts and skipping my kid’s school concert, not books. If I’m reading the back of a cereal box, all is O.K. with the world. Guilt? Please.

I do believe, however, that we are living in the golden age of crime fiction, if you want to call it a genre. In no particular order: Dennis Lehane, Tana French, Laura Lippman, Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos, Lee Child, Jo Nesbo, Gillian Flynn, Alison Gaylin, Jeff Abbott, Susan Isaacs, Kate Atkinson, Linda Fairstein, Ian Rankin, Lawrence Block, Nelson DeMille, James Lee Burke, Robert Crais, Louise Penny, and the editor is making me stop so my apologies to those I love and left off this list, but you get my point. There has never been a time when so many are doing it so well and with such diversity. Revel in it, my friends.

The movie adaptation of your novel “Tell No One” was a critical and commercial hit. What in particular did you think it gained and lost when adapted into a French film?

Guillaume Canet, the film’s director, understood that “Tell No One” is a love story first and a thriller second. Hollywood always wanted it the other way around — sacrifice the heart for a few more action sequences. No one wants to hear of yet another novelist who was less than pleased by Hollywood’s treatment of his work, but I remember a scary early meeting with a producer who lamented, “Who is going to believe that your hero still pines for his true love eight years after her murder?” Answer: Anyone with a beating heart. I think the blend of visions — my American love/crime story and Canet’s French infusion — took us both to another level. You get lucky sometimes.

In addition to your Myron Bolitar series, you now write a young adult version, featuring Mickey Bolitar. What inspired you to get into Y.A.? Are you a fan of the genre?

I’m not big on the term “genre,” though that complaint may sound self-serving. I look at it not as a “genre” but as a form, like a haiku or sonata, where you can still have large themes and move people with language and story, and play with their expectations. Certain forms are wonderful because they compel you to tell a story and not get too lost in your own genius. This is often a healthy thing for a novelist.

In the case of young adult, I’m not even sure what the form would be. The biggest difference between my adult novels and my young adult novels is the age of the protagonist: He is 16 instead of, say, 40. With all the complaints about today’s youth, they are the savviest readers in the world. If you, the writer, dumb it down, you’re dead to them.

What kind of reader were you as a child? And what were your favorite childhood books?

My childhood was frighteningly normal and brings to mind the great Flaubert line: “Be regular and orderly in your life, like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” Childhood favorites include some obvious choices: the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis; “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” by Roald Dahl; “A Wrinkle in Time,” by Madeleine L’Engle; “The Forgotten Door,” by Alexander Key. I loved to read, of course, but I wouldn’t say I was that kid with his nose in a book. Most of my classmates probably remember me more for the basketball I was dribbling than the book I may have been carrying.

Which novels have had the most impact on you as a writer? Is there a particular book that made you want to write?

If I had to pick one book — and that is an impossible task — I would have to say “Marathon Man,” by William Goldman. Yes, I could list a bunch of highbrow literary titles here to show how well read I am, but when I was maybe 14 years old, my father gave me his just-read paperback of “Marathon Man.” It was my first adult thriller and I remember being so engrossed I started thinking, “You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn’t put this book down.” At the time I had no idea that I’d end up a writer, but I think subconsciously something inside of me wanted to be able to make people feel what I was feeling — to give them that same can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-all-night, complete-escape experience.

You’re hosting a literary dinner party. Which three writers are invited, living or deceased?

I would invite Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake and David Foster Wallace because I miss all three of them greatly, both professionally and personally.

And if you could only bring three books to a desert island, what would they be?

I would probably start going through this issue of The New York Times Book Review and find the three best (and longest) books in it. I rarely reread. There are too many new experiences out there — wonderful books that I’ll tragically never get to — to go back. My favorite books live on in my head, sometimes in ways very different from the original, and I don’t want to throw that experience out of whack by reliving the reality. So I’m packing three unread books for the trip. I’m open to suggestions. Just make them fiction and make them long. Oh, one of them would definitely be Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch.” It fits the above criteria perfectly.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read? 

I can’t think of one, not because I’m a man of no discerning taste, but because I have no qualms about abandoning books that suck. I’m not afraid to do it on Page 1 or Page 100. For that reason, it has been years since I’ve completed a novel that I detested. Life is too short and there is too much good stuff out there. I’m old enough now to know pretty quickly what is and what is not going to work for me.

What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?

Where to begin? “Wuthering Heights,” “Brave New World,”  “Invisible Man,”  “All the King’s Men.” I could go on and on. I’m not embarrassed by this. I just wish I had more time to read. I’m also somewhat over the classics. Sacrilege, I know. The classics for me are like the Beatles: I went through a period in my life where I listened to them nonstop and I still love them and if one of their songs comes on the radio I’m happy — but I almost never seek them out anymore.