In Coup de Grace, the novel with which he has returned after six years of absence, Dennis Lehane describes in detail a humble Boston neighborhood in the ’70s, in which its inhabitants, mostly Irish immigrants, deal with miserable jobs and lives suffocated by alcohol and drugs, while they try to keep the neighboring black community, made up of workers as crushed as them, at a distance.
There are in it many echoes of his own childhood in a neighboring neighborhood of who he is today, he is much more than a successful writer with 15 novels published, among them some that have made it to the cinema such as Shutter Island, Vivir de noche, Mystic River and Desapareció una. evening. Lehane is also an accomplished television screenwriter and showrunner, responsible for Black Bird, the series that won the Golden Globe last year to Paul Walter Hauser, and paved the way for an exclusive contract with Apple for which Lehane has the support of that platform to develop new series, including an adaptation of Coup de Grace in which he will be the one making the decisions.
However, the one who receives La Vanguardia in his elegant house in a middle-class neighborhood of Los Angeles does not forget his condition as the son of Irish immigrants or how hard he had to work to achieve his dream of becoming a writer: “He “I was very lucky,” he admits, adding: “I was born with the right color in the country and at the right time, with the right sex. Talent was a gift, work was not, because to get there I had to break my back.” .
He has become a successful television showrunner. What made you sit down to write a novel when you can now tell the same story in a miniseries?
They are totally different things. The truth is that during several years of relative tranquility she could not write. I tried three times. I had a lot of fun writing scripts. I really enjoy doing it. I love the social aspect of the screenwriter’s work. I thought maybe After the Fall was going to be my last book, because I finished it because I had a contract with my publisher. I went to New Orleans to work on my first series as a showrunner. I had done it in collaboration with someone on two other occasions but this time was my first time alone. Suddenly the Covid epidemic began, lightning was falling all the time and it was tremendously hot. There were some personal problems that were affecting production. For the first time I was in charge of a multimillion-dollar project and I felt like everything could go to hell at any moment. It was then that my brain split as a protective measure and I sat down to write Coup de Grace. I did it as a way to preserve inner peace. As a form of self-control. The novel flowed in an incredible way. I could write in the old house I was staying in or in the trailer, at night, in the morning or in the middle of the day. Everything flowed naturally.
Why do you think it happened?
I owe everything to Mary Pat. I knew right away that she was something special, and as soon as I connected her to the summer of ’74 I found myself in an absolutely unique place. They are rare moments. It happened to me with Mystic River, I felt it with The Delivery and to a lesser extent with Disappeared One Night. These are times when you feel like you are the only one who can write that book. For example, as original as it may seem, Shutter Island is a book that could have been written by someone else. But I can’t think of anyone who could have written Coup de Grace. That made the whole process very enjoyable. It was an exorcism, in which I was able to get all my anger out, but it was an enjoyable process, no matter how dark the book is.
Anger?
Throughout my life I carried a frustration that I could not define or understand. It is certainly not an autobiographical novel, I am not talking about my home, where there was no kind of abuse. On the contrary, he had adorable parents. That’s why I couldn’t explain it but it was always there. And when I started writing Coup de Grace, all that feeling came up suddenly and I realized that was what had made me so angry: having witnessed so much hate and all that poison at such a young age tore something out of me. And then for the next ten years I lived in a world where there were a lot of racist people. Not being one was like being a spy in foreign territory. That experience gave me all the tools I needed to be a writer, and this book for me is the culmination of many things I have been writing about throughout my career.
Are you referring to when you saw the racist demonstration you describe in the book when you were nine years old?
Yes. When you see something like that there is no way you can forget it, especially as it was in my case, when I saw people screaming and especially the torches. One loses trust in adults. He no longer respects them. I think being there completely transformed me, because I saw the danger in that crowd, which could have ended badly, and luckily it didn’t happen. Witnessing that disconcerted me a lot.
At some point Mary Pat realizes that she inherited racism from her parents and then passed it on to her daughter. When did she find out that it didn’t happen to you?
Since the beginning. I grew up in a largely immigrant community. My parents were Irish, my neighbors were Polish and Italian. In that community everyone talked about other groups in the same way that happens in Europe. When you are listening to it all the time and you realize that they say it without malice, that it is an idea imported from Europe, it takes you a minute to realize that when they talk about black people the tone is different. Nobody reacted to those comments. I saw the graffiti on the walls in 1973 or 1974 that said: “all immigrants must be killed” and the presence of the Ku Klux Klan was felt. It never seemed to me that all of that made sense, quite the opposite. It was something I couldn’t understand.
In a series you have to have everything prepared in advance. When you write a novel, do you know where you are going?
I’m inventing it as I write. In the case of Coup de Grace, I was reviewing my first sketches, because originally it was going to be called Old Calling, which is one of the housing plans in Boston. It was simply three pages. And most of what was left in the book is there, with the exception of Bobby, who appeared out of nowhere. I also didn’t know what the ending was going to be. I knew it was going to have something to do with Augie Williams’ funeral. But I didn’t know what was going to happen there.
Was Mary Pat in that initial sketch?
And.
What did you discover about her in the writing process?
What I discovered, and it surprised me, was his vulnerability, something I had not imagined. Because the women like her that I knew growing up were very tough, and they raised equally tough children. I always thought they were strong, because that’s how they looked: chain smokers, tireless drinkers, capable of punching you in the face if you scared them. The first scene I imagined was the one in which she beats up her daughter’s apparent boyfriend in the bar. But as soon as I got to work I realized that these women were tragic figures, that they had probably been beaten as children and that they probably married men who beat them to death. They were trapped in a cycle of poverty that would never end. Those cycles of poverty certainly did not end in South Boston for many generations who grew up in those housing plans. They were very tragic lives.
Do you surprise yourself when you write?
All the time. That is what i like the most. That’s why in my previous notes I don’t define too much what is going to happen, something that I do have to do in my television series, because that’s what they taught me, but no one taught me how to do it in a book. Every time I’ve tried it, I didn’t like the result. In the case of Coup de Grace there were big surprises, like Bobby. If he hadn’t appeared, the book would have been extremely dark. Then there were others, like Mary Pat’s car. It is not the best way to write, because it is impossible to finish a book every year. Once my editor understood that about me, I moved away from that goal, which would have resulted in a very lucrative career, and I dedicated myself to writing my books my way.
What separates writing a book from directing a television series?
The pride you feel is different. When you write a book, you are God, because you control every little detail. That is why writing a novel can be compared to composing a symphony. But to be honest, being God can be a huge pain in the ass, but it can also be wonderful when things work out, and I felt like that happened with Coup de Grace. Maybe it will be the last novel I write, and if so, everything will be fine. And if I write another book, it will have to come about in the same way, because it was something that came from me, I never looked for it, I didn’t try to find a story because I had to fulfill a contract. That’s how it will be if there is another. It will have to come from a totally pure place. It was something I needed to write. It’s a luxury that most writers can’t afford.