Interview with Declan Burke (part 2)

(If you were one of the unlucky people who missed part one go HERE and be delighted and amazed.)

Part Deux ...

Me - Back to your man, Harry. One of the many things in Eightball Boogie that fascinated me was his relationship with his psycho brother. Tell us where that came from.

Declan - Another tough question. The honest answer is that I don’t know - if I did, I probably wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of writing a book about it. But these things tend to be buried pretty deep in our psyches, and take quite a bit of excavating.

As with all the ostensibly bad guys in my books - Rossi in THE BIG O, Karlsson in ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL - I have a lot of sympathy for Gonzo, who is Harry’s brother in EIGHTBALL BOOGIE. He’s an exaggerated version of the milder kind of sociopath that people tend to meet in their lives - the bullying boss at work, the aggressive moron who lashes out at the end of the night after one too many beers, the passive-aggressive manipulator we’ve all met at some point in our lives. Gene Kerrigan makes the point that most criminals aren’t all that different to law-abiding citizens, they simply want to pay their mortgage off quicker, and are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. To a certain extent, Harry and Gonzo are two sides of the same coin, brothers who grew up the hard way and whose lives were directed down slightly different paths by their individual experiences. Harry, possibly belatedly, discovers a brake on his impulses at a particular time in his life; Gonzo doesn’t, and feels free to do whatever he needs to do in order to get what he wants. He’s a typical bully, a borderline sociopath who doesn’t have the ability to empathise with other people. Given that EIGHTBALL is a crime novel, it was inevitable, I suppose, that Gonzo would at some point end up with a gun in his hand, but that’s not what was interesting to me. What I was interested in was why Gonzo became that bully in the first place, in the factors that created his particular pathology.

EIGHTBALL BOOGIE is told in a first-person narrative, and Harry is a freelance journalist-cum-private investigator (he calls himself a ‘research consultant’) as a nod to Chandler’s Marlowe, so it’s Harry’s story; but the epigraph I used at the start of the book, from Jim Thompson’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME, is dedicated in my mind to Gonzo: ‘Yeah, I reckon that’s all unless our kind gets another chance in the Next Place. Our kind. Us people. All of us that started the game with a crooked cue, that wanted so much and got so little, that meant so good and did so bad.

So Gonzo is Harry’s doppelganger, in a way, his alter-ego. But I suppose too that both Harry and Gonzo are aspects of my own personality. In a parallel universe, I turned out like Gonzo; in another parallel universe, I ended up like Harry. Happily, I live in this universe, and don’t have to be either.

Me -  Another pleasure for me in Eightball Boogie is your facility for the bon mot, the wisecrack and the banter. Go on make me jealous - does this come naturally to you or do you have to work at it? And part 2 of this question - did you feel you had to add the humour to leaven the darker stuff?

Declan - Well, you’re very kind, sir, and I appreciate the good word. To be honest, at this remove, I think there’s probably too much wise-cracking in EIGHTBALL - there are times, I think, when it distracts from what’s happening. I’ve written a sequel to EIGHTBALL called THE BIG EMPTY, and Harry is less inclined to crack wise in that one, although there’s no pretending that he doesn’t have a smart mouth. But when THE BIG EMPTY opens, Harry’s just out of prison after doing five years, and that’s an experience that’ll teach even the smartest arse when to keep his mouth shut.

By the same token, he’s just a slightly subdued version of the Harry we meet in EIGHTBALL - my sense of humour tends to veer towards the absurd and the surreal, which is probably why I enjoy Chandler’s one-liners so much. And most of the humour in EIGHTBALL is in there because I was writing an homage to Chandler, in part, and I did deliberately over-egg the pudding because I wanted people to know that I wasn’t just trying (and failing miserably) to imitate Chandler’s style, I was trying incorporate that kind of style into a contemporary Irish setting - which is itself, of course, an absurd thing to do.

I’m afraid that the answer to your first question is yes, that I find comedy easy to write - or far easier, I should say, than writing consistently serious material. I’ve tried in the past to write a serious novel, but it either flops miserably, or it twists itself into something funny. It’s probably a failing of mine that I can’t write anything without raising an arched eyebrow above it, but then, the crime novel these days verges on self-parody as it is, so all I’m doing is giving the conventions a bit of a tickle once in a while. Maybe some day I’ll run out of gags, and then I’ll get to write a proper, serious novel. It’d be a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

That said, I’m a big fan of the notion peddled by the ancient Greeks that tragedy is simply underdeveloped comedy, although they had a different interpretation of ‘comedy’ than we do. Still, I can’t see why you shouldn’t write a novel that has something serious to say, and not leaven the darkness in the process, as you suggest. Elmore Leonard, Kurt Vonnegut, Spike Milligan, Colin Bateman, Carl Hiaasen, Barry Gifford, Chandler himself - there’s a very good reason why I’ve read virtually everything those writers have written. Eoin Colfer’s PLUGGED, incidentally, is a welcome addition to those ranks.

Me - A wee birdy (well, your blog) tells me you're bringing to market a book about this new and exciting wave of Irish Crime Fiction. Tell us about that.

Declan - DOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY is a collection of essays, interviews and short stories written by Irish crime writers about the phenomenon that is the current explosion in Irish crime writing. And it’s not simply a case of quantity, as the roll-call suggests: John Connolly, Tana French, Eoin McNamee, Adrian McKinty, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Arlene Hunt, Gene Kerrigan, Stuart Neville, Jane Casey, Colin Bateman, John Banville, Declan Hughes, Niamh O’Connor, Alan Glynn, Brian McGilloway, Alex Barclay, Ken Bruen … they’re all writers who can hold their own in any company, crime or otherwise. 

It just seemed to me that a whole generation of writers was coming through at the same time, all writing during a period of time in Ireland that has proved convulsive - from the murder of Veronica Guerin and the IRA ceasefires in Northern Ireland in the mid-1990s, through the rise of the Celtic Tiger economic miracle, and then the decline and fall into economic meltdown - and I thought it might be an interesting exercise to have the writers themselves explore the reasons - personal, political, commercial, literary - why they chose to write crime fiction. 

Hopefully it’ll appeal to crime fiction fans all over the world, though, because the writers mentioned above have already proven that Irish crime writing can compete with the best the international stage has to offer.

Me - Now I'm going to do to you what you do to your victims, sorry guests on your own excellent blog (If you're not a follower, get your butt over there pronto)  CRIME ALWAYS PAYS - God dictates you can only read OR write, which do you go for?

Declan - Read. Read, read, read, read, read. Don’t get me wrong, I love to write, and God knows I get like a hungover bear if I don’t get to write when I need to. But if I had to make a choice, and being all too aware of my own limitations as a writer, and all too aware of the fact that there are writers out there that I couldn’t match in a thousand years of trying, then I’d be happy to sit back and read until my eyesight fails. 

To write is to be; to read is to live.

An Interview with Declan Burke (Part 1)

Declan Burke is an author and freelance writer. He writes a monthly crime column for the Irish Times, and reviews fiction for a variety of other outlets, including RTE radio’s Arena programme, the Sunday Business Post, and the Sunday Independent. He is the editor ofDOWN THESE GREEN STREETS: IRISH CRIME WRITING IN THE 21st CENTURY (Liberties Press). His novel Eightball Boogie was reviewed on these here pages recently and I was so in awe of his talent I thought I should have a few words with him on your behalf. If you like books, you're gonna love this ...

Me. You have 3 words. Describe Eightball Boogie.

Declan: Chandler on poitín.  

 Me. I had to look that up. It's that illegal alcoholic brain-rot stuff, innit. (Pocheen) Declan, you now have another 21 ...

Declan: Irish freelance journalist Harry Rigby gets caught up in a paramilitary feud investigating the story behind a politician’s wife’s apparent suicide.  

Me. Why fiction? Why crime?

Declan: They say that most writers write their first books because the book they most want to read hasn’t been written yet. I like to read all kinds of books - different types of fiction, and non-fictions - but I’ve never yet read a non-fiction that made me feel like I wanted to write a better biography / history / pop science book, mainly because I’m not qualified enough in any one area to do so. And then there’s the fact that books that are made up, invented, require the least amount of research. I quite like the fact that I am, as a friend once pointed out to me, the world’s greatest living expert on Harry Rigby. He’s the one topic on which I can’t be contradicted.

As for why crime: I like that the crime novel has an in-built narrative arc, and that its narrative arc is very similar to the classical three-act tragedy. It’d be tough to reinvent the wheel every time, although when I’m writing, I always do my best to push the conventions as far out of shape as possible. Plus, crime stories tend to favour life-or-death scenarios, which gives good crime writing an edge over less intense tales. It’s also true that I have a personality that is disposed to peeking over the edge of abyss, and crime novels, by and large, tend to drag you into dark places that you wouldn’t normally dream of going in your day-to-day life.  

Me. You talk about peeking into the abyss and the dark places. Do you ever get strange looks or comments from friends or readers who wonder if the violence you describe (not that you're particularly violent in the grand scheme of things) is really you?

 Declan - Not really, I have to say. As you suggest, my books aren’t overly violent anyway, although there have been a few scenes here and there when I pushed the boat out. Actually, one of my motivations for writing THE BIG O was to see if I could write a believable crime fiction novel that had no murders and the absolute bare minimum of violence. What violence does happen in that book happens ‘off-stage’, other than an accidental knee-capping.   

My latest book, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which will be published in September, is a different matter entirely. It’s a story in which an author engages with the protagonist of a draft he’s abandoned, and the two decide to rewrite the novel to see if they could make the protagonist a more likeable sociopath, in the process blowing up a hospital. The author in the book is unnamed, although it’s made explicit that he is the author of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, and together the pair descend into a rare kind of madness … 

When it was finished, I sent the book out to some writers I know and respect, hoping they might give it a few kind words, which most of them did. But I also got a couple of follow-up emails, asking if I was, y’know, okay, and hoping my mental health was sound. Which suggests that the book, for all its failings, achieved what it set out to do. And yes, thanks for asking, my mental health is perfectly fine. When I’m not writing, anyway.”

Me -  Now, let's jump into the abyss ... when writers write about violent events what, if any, responsibility to the reader do they have?

Declan - That’s a very tough question to answer. The easy way to do it, I think, is to take flight for the moral high ground, and say that the writer’s only responsibility is to the story, following it to its logical conclusion to the best of his or her ability. Once the story is written, it’s up to the reader to accept or reject what the writer says, or what he or she has the characters do.

I suppose it’s all to do with intent, and perhaps even as much to do with the kind of violence being described. For example, there seems to be a fascination at present with some writers (and readers too, obviously) for a graphic depiction of rape, torture and other kinds of degrading violence towards women. I can understand the logic behind that kind of story, because the majority of fiction readers are women, who live their lives, if the statistics are to be believed, with an acute awareness of the possibility, or threat, of sexual violence hanging over them; in that context, a story in which a physically or sexually abused woman exacts vengeance on her abusers can be read as, ultimately, an uplifting one. In a sense, such novels are simply grotesque exaggerations of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.

What matters there, I think, is the fine line between a graphic description of such violence for the sake of verisimilitude, and one which is simply exploitative and titillating. In that scenario, the writer - or the serious writer, at least - most certainly has a responsibility to his or her readers. 

But it really is a matter of intent, and context. I remember when the movie ‘Fight Club’ came out first, and it was hammered for its depictions of violence, which were shown - particularly in the fight club scenes themselves - in all their gory detail. In other words, when you hit someone hard, bones crack, blood flows, suffering follows. That same month, the latest Bond movie was released, in which God only knows how many people were wiped out with machine-gun fire and explosions in the opening sequence alone. By contrast, only one person dies violently in ‘Fight Club’, and it’s a death that has very serious consequences, whereas Bond simply goes his merry way, bedding women and blasting baddies. Bizarrely, the movie that got the sordid reputation for being overtly violent was the one that engaged with violence and death as a serious issue, while the glorified cartoon of mass killing was greeted with whoops and cheers.

I’ve been in fights, in my time. Not many, and always for defensive reasons, but the experiences were such that I never take violence lightly, either as a writer or a reader.

Me - Oooo - not a man to mess with then. 

(Note to reader - all 3 of you - the interview with Declan was so good I've stretched it out over two posts. Come back next time for more crime fiction goodness.)