[ Music ] >> Sponsored by the
James Madison Council and the National
Endowment for the Arts. [ Music ] >> Maureen Corrigan: Hello, and welcome to the 2021
National Book Festival. I'm Maureen Corrigan, I'm the
book critic for NPR's Fresh Air. I'm also a regular contributor to the Washington
Post Book World. I am here with the superb
suspense writer, Tana French. Tana French has written
eight suspense novels, six of them are the
Dublin Murder Squad books, and two are standalones. Her latest is called, The
Searcher, and that's the book that I'd like to focus on
today, but I hope we get to talk about everything. Tana French, I'm a big fan
as are so many people I know and they're so envious that I'm
getting to talk with you today. Welcome to this virtual
book festival. >> Tana French: Thank you so
much, Maureen, I'm delighted to be here and thank you
so much for doing this, because not to be too mutual
admiration but I've been a fan of your writing for a long
time, so this is great. >> Maureen Corrigan: I
appreciate that very much. The theme of this book festival
this year, not surprisingly is "Open a book, open the
world" and of course so many of us have reached for books to open a world during
this pandemic so I just wonder
what have books meant to you throughout your life,
and then more specifically, what have books meant to
you during this particular, peculiar, frightening period that we're living through,
still living through? >> Tana French: Well,
I was always, I was one of those
total immersion readers when I was a kid. I was, you know, if
you gave me a new book, basically I was gone. I didn't exist until I
finished the last page. I always loved reading. I kind of miss that now,
because you know, in adulthood and kids kick in, you don't
get the chance to do that, to just vanish into a
book for hours on end. I think during the
pandemic mainly, it's been really interesting
to watch what we prioritize and discuss with friends;
who's reading what, what it is we're looking
for during this time. I know, I've known a lot
of people who are looking for escape, who are
reading books about really far away times,
or reading science fiction that would take them
completely out of any of this, and other people were
looking for sort of resonance, or reading books about
plagues or natural disasters. They really wanted something that they felt connected
to this time. And I didn't go there at
all, I went, a lot of mine, I reread all of the
Agatha Christie, right, all of the Agatha
Christie, because I figured out halfway through, I
was looking for something with an ending, with a solution,
with all the ends neatly tied up and the crisis is contained,
it's completed, it's finished and we're done with it. And usually in Christie,
you know, nobody is too deeply traumatized
by anything that happened. Everybody can move on. There are exceptions
obviously, but overall. So there was a lot, I felt like
I was looking for something that would resolve everything
and let everything move on. But my big pandemic book, the
one that I'm just recommending to everyone during this, is Amor
Towles' A Gentlemen in Moscow. >> Maureen Corrigan: Oh, okay. >> Tana French: He's
in lockdown basically, he's in a decades long
lockdown in a hotel, the, his main character is a count,
white Russian, whose been put under house arrest in a
Moscow hotel for the rest of his life, basically. And it's such a lovely book
because it's all about how, even in the saddest,
the most restrictive, the most dislocating times, we
find ways to make connections and we find ways
to find happiness and to make little
differences in people's lives. And I really like that. Like I read it before
lockdown initially, but rereading it during
lockdown was a whole different experience. I'm really glad I
had that book there. >> Maureen Corrigan: That's
a terrific recommendation. You have family history
connected to Russian don't you? One of your grandparents? >> Tana French: Yeah, my
grandmother was Russian and was from very much that background. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. >> Tana French: She was born
a countess and born early because of fighting on
the streets of Moscow. So this is kind of the
world that one side of my family comes from. My mother actually
gave me the book going, if you want to understand my
side of the family, read this. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Yes, yes, so interesting. Well let's talk about you and
let's talk about The Searcher, your latest novel,
which is a standalone. I was blown away by it. I think it has everything;
it has the plot, it has this brooding atmosphere,
it has an amazing situation that I don't think
you've used before, unless my mind is blanking. You have an American,
who's your main character, and you've set it
in rural Ireland. You're novels are usually set
in the city in the suburbs and correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's
been a novel that has been set out in the remote countryside, which seems a little malevolent,
it's always watchful. But I'm sure listeners would
much rather have you give a little thumbnail kind of
introduction to the premise of this novel; the main
character and why he's out there in rural Ireland. >> Tana French: Well, he's
a middle aged American guy who has just retired from
the Chicago police force after 25 years there, and he's
basically lost all his faith in the job and he's just had a
tough divorce, and he is kind of having a moral crisis and
he reckons that by getting away from all the places where
he was a police officer, where he was a husband, where
he was a father, all the things that he feels he's somehow made
a mess of, morally speaking. Maybe if he gets somewhere that
will be simpler, he'll be able to find his sense of
right and wrong again. And he reckons that a
little Irish rural village, miles from anywhere, is going
to be a good place to do it. Only it kind of doesn't work out
that way because a neighbor kid, whose teenage brother has
disappeared, demands that Cal, the protagonist, investigate. And of course he gets drawn
in for one more investigation. >> Maureen Corrigan: One of my
favorite parts of your setup is that Cal buys the
cottage in Ireland over the internet, right? He never, it's just, you know,
based on those photographs and of course, when he
arrives there's a lot of work to be done. Which he kind knows, but I guess
he doesn't really know the depth of the work to be done. I think you do a wonderful job
of giving us this character who has some sense of how his
life has fallen part a bit, but he's not sitting around
at night doing deep analysis, because he's not
that kind of a man. So, you know, there's
a section of the novel where he's thinking back to
the conversation with his wife that seemed to be a training
point and eventually led to their divorce,
but he can't figure out why it was a
turning point, you know? And he seems very, so
genuine to me in that, that he could probably,
he can read a crime scene, he can read other people,
but about his own life, he's a little, he's still
a little bit in the dark. >> Tana French: Yeah,
he's not introspective, that was deliberate. I really didn't want to write
an introspective character, because I just finished
writing The Witch Elm, where the main site of all
the action is inside the main character's head. And I did not want to
write anyone introspective, I was very done with that. I wanted to write somebody
who was all about action, for whom the defining elements
of anyone, including himself, weren't what does
this person think? What does this person feel? What does this person say? It was all about no, no, no,
you're defined by what you do. What does this person do? >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. >> Tana French: And it's
probably why the book's in the third person. Because if you're first person,
then it's an implication, the implication there is that what's inside the main
character's head is important. And to Cal, that wouldn't
be important at all. Doesn't matter, you can
think all the right things, but if you're not doing the
right things, it doesn't count. So that's why third
person, where what you focus on is what he does, which
is what matters to him. >> Maureen Corrigan: I
think that this is a novel, that if you're at all
agoraphobic, you might want to think twice about reading it. Because, and I was born in New
York City, I live in Washington and I've lived in Philadelphia,
I'm used to cities and I'm used to those landscapes that
are mapped out in streets, and this novel has
so many moments where Cal is sitting
outside at night and he feels eyes watching
him and he doesn't, it's almost like the landscape
is always watching him. And I find that more
terrifying than say, walking down a dark
alley in any city. But I wondered about Cal, if
there was something of you in him in the sense that
you were born in Vermont. As anyone who's looked at your
biography knows you've lived various places all
over the world. You came to Ireland for college
and there must have been a time when you were still trying to
figure out the nuanced codes of behavior and what
people really meant. There's an amazing
chapter here, Chapter 11, where I don't think I breathed
once when I was reading it, where Cal is in the local pub,
which is basically a cottage in the middle of a
field, and all of the men around him are sort
of making jokes, and he can't quite
tell sometimes, how hostile they're being or
whether they're really jokes. You know, he's the outsider
and I wondered if, A, if you felt any of that when you
first made that move to Ireland and if, I don't know
if any of that shows up in Cal, maybe it doesn't. >> Tana French: No, I think
definitely that was kind of a normal feature of my
life up until I moved here, because we moved around a lot and when you're an
international brat or it think, third culture kid is the
term they use most often, international brat, you
get very used to that. You get very used to,
you move to a new place, you have to be completely
on the alert to figure out what the codes are,
what the language is that you don't speak, you
know, I'm not talking you know, moving to Italy, you
need to speak Italian. What's the physical,
the subtext language, all of these light codes
that you need to learn, so that was very much
a feature of our lives when I was moving
around as a kid. And definitely when I moved to
Ireland it's the same thing, because the Irish sense of
humor, it's quite oblique, it's quite dry, you
have to get used to it. You know, I had been
coming here for summers so I had an advantage,
I had friends already, but of course it
takes getting used to. And I thought that
for Cal in particular, because it's just him,
surrounded by people who have known each other, not
just for their whole lives, but for generations basically. He's coming into a world where everyone speaks
a language he doesn't and where they're
using that against him. They're not, it's not just
that he has to get used to it the way I did because,
you know, you're new in town. It was that he has to
get used to something that they're very deliberately
using to keep him in a position where he understands just
as much as they want him to. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. >> Tana French: So he's
being kept on the back foot, he's being kept unbalanced by
this being the new guy in town, always with great deliberation
by the people who live there. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. And as in so many of your
novels, the situation darkens where I almost felt like, if he doesn't crack
the code more deftly, his life is in peril. Like there's a cost to not, to not really understanding
what you're hearing and how people are behaving and exactly how threatening
it might be. I characterized the novel when I
did a review of it for the Post, as a slow burn, because you
just kept turning up the heat. And it's spectacular, I would,
I won't even ask you to read from it because you need to read
a lot and we're on, you know, we're online, it doesn't work,
but it's really spectacular. I would love to hear you
read that chapter one day. >> Tana French: That one was
fun to write, I have to say-- >> Maureen Corrigan:
Oh, I can imagine. >> Tana French: The whole
thing was fun to write, not every book is but Cal
was nice to spend time with. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah, yeah. He comes to this town, yes, an
adolescent shows up at his door, and eventually this young
person draws Cal in and says, I want you to look for
my brother, my brother, his older brother, my older
brother has disappeared and the police aren't
doing enough or anything. And of course, like many
detective hero before him, these guys always get
involved, you know, they always go on that quest. They answer that summons. You called the novel,
The Searcher, and as everyone has pointed
out, there's a tip of the hat to the John Ford
classic western, The Searchers, and I love that. I even wondered if there was a
wink that it was set in the west of Ireland, I don't know
you know, over think that-- >> Tana French: Yeah. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah. >> Tana French: Oh yeah,
that was [inaudible], yeah. >> Maureen Corrigan: Okay. But I was a little surprised,
and I wondered if you were, at some of the kind of the blow
back the have patterned this kind of homage to the
western after The Searchers, which is such a controversial
classic these days, because of the racism,
because to for depiction of Native Americans, because
of the violent you know, hatred that the, especially the
John Wayne character directs to the Native Americans
who've stolen his niece. You know, it's a
very violent film. And that's I think there was
especially one review in Slate where you know, it was almost like you shouldn't have done
this, you shouldn't have chosen that particular film to not
do, you know, that's over. Were you surprised, and how do
you answer criticism like that? >> Tana French: I'll be honest,
I very seldom read reviews because what happens
then is I start thinking about the previous book which
is finished, I struggle with oh, my God, maybe they've
got a point, maybe I should have
done this differently. And then I'm not writing
whatever I'm supposed to be writing. So it's a destruction. I don't think it's true
that it was patterned after The Searchers,
which I'll be honest, I have only read part
of, The Searchers, I've only read part of. It's definitely got
serious western influences, but that wasn't one of the
westerns that I was reading or nodding to in particular. I mean I was reading more
Lonesome Dove and True Grit and the Sisters Brothers,
for a modern one. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Well I haven't read that. >> Tana French: The
Searchers, no The Searchers, I mean the title has, you know, there's a definite reference
there but it was more that it felt like a good title that would fit both the main
characters while also having that western influence. But I don't think it's got,
from what I read of the book, The Searchers, I don't think
it has anything particularly in common with that
except some of the western, the great western
themes, like the quest, the journey to find someone. But that's just so
many of the westerns, there isn't a specific reference to The Searchers I wouldn't have
thing, anywhere in the book. >> Maureen Corrigan: I think
it was the general situation of looking for a young
person who's disappeared, moving into territory
that's not your own somehow, and having to navigate it. You know-- >> Tana French: Well that's
all westerns, though, that's-- [ Crosstalk ] I mean again, you know, you
get that in Lonesome Dove for example, when Gus
goes looking for Lorena, whose been abducted and it's
very clear in Lonesome Dove that they're aware, or
Gus at least is aware, that he's in territory
that isn't really his and that he's doing something that isn't what he
thought he'd be doing here and that he's destroying things. So I think there is,
that's a main theme in, all westerns have moving into
territory that's not your own, but what I liked about
Lonesome Dove in particular, is that it has an
awareness that by moving into territory that's not your
own, you can have an impact that is not what you planned. That is not what you foresaw, and you can be much more
destructive than you ever, than ever occurred to you,
that you can just bounce in, all oblivious, thinking
that you know, yay, I'm just living my life
and bouncing in here. And you can end up doing
a huge amount of damage that you never planned on doing. And that was one of the
things from Lonesome Dove that I really liked and
that I hoped would seep through in this book. His growing awareness that you
have an impact you didn't plan on when you go into
territory that's not yours. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah,
that's such a wonderful point. The detective novel has
often, and the mystery novel, American mystery, has also
you know, been credited as having roots in
the cowboy story, I mean usually you've got
the lone detective, right? Now think of the, especially
hard-boiled American detective fiction, kind of the almost
like the frontier of the city, the wildness of the city, in
Maltese Falcon and you know, all of Raymond Chandler,
that kind of thing. And also that kind of tough guy
character who's very interior. I'm trying to get at a question
about genre because I know that you've kind of talked
about genre and said, well, genre's breaking down and I
think a lot of writers feel that these days, that you
know, writer like yourself, you're exploring different
ways to almost link genres or break down the barriers. And yet I'm wondering
if there's a, if there's an advantage
besides marketing, to having your novels be
labeled suspense novels, or even police procedurals,
like if there's an enjoyment that someone like myself gets
from seeing a writer like you, ring changes on a
familiar formula and that's part of the pleasure. I felt that here, like oh, isn't
that clever what she's doing by almost marrying these
two genres; the western and the detective
novel and setting it in a different place that way. I'm not even quite sure
what my question is. But you're obviously you're
doing something in your work as you're starting, working
with these standalones, I hope you're going back
to the Dublin Murder Squad at some point, I
don't know if you are, but you're challenging yourself
and does genre feel restrictive? Is that part of the
reason to, you know, keep pushing the bounds? >> Tana French: Well, I'll
be honest, when I started in the woods I didn't think I
was writing detective fiction, I thought I was just
writing a book that had a detective framework. Because otherwise, I
mean I write long anyway, if I don't have that framework,
I'm just going to keep writing, it'll be ten million works
long and [inaudible]. So I thought I was writing
a book, just a book book, that had that framework
to keep it in place. But then my publishers
explained that it's a good thing to put it somewhere that makes
sense so readers know to look. I think I came along at a
lucky point in terms of genre, because the boundaries were
starting to be seen not as end points but as
fun things to play with. Like if you look at Dennis
LaHane, with Mystic River, now that is a great
mystery novel, but it's also a great social
history novel, and a coming of age novel, and a family
saga, and just a great book with great thematic depth
and great characterization. People were struggling to go
okay, here are the conventions as a mystery genre, how
can I play with them? How can I use them as
a starting point rather than a finishing point? And so I stepped into a space where that was very
much a possibility, where you can go okay, I
think I'll, I have a spin on noire this time or ooh,
what if I want to borrow a bit of gothic here or okay,
westerns, I like the idea of sticking some western
conventions in the west of Ireland for a
change, let's try that. It was very not unbounded, but the boundaries had
become something interesting at the time I came along. So I got lucky I think,
because I like that. I don't, I don't like being in
my comfort zone as a writer. I find it very unsettling
and I don't want to fall into the temptation, which I
think is quite easy in genre, where you have this one
matrix to work with. The temptation of writing
the same book over and over. Finding something that
works for me and going, well I'll basically so
this again and again. And I think the mystery genre
at this point is so open that it's easy to find a new
tangent every time to play with. It's very accepted. I think especially in the U.S.
where you guys are really, really good at creating and
accepting new sub-genres and sub-sub-genres
and it's just, it's really fertile ground. I think audiences like that. So yeah, I came along
at a good time. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yeah,
I think we are in something of a second Renaissance and
I think that for a while, just my take on it, the
excitement of the '80s and '90s where there were all
different kinds of detectives and they weren't just the
straight, white man, you know, people of color, gay,
lesbian characters coming in and they were the
center of the story, investigating what's
wrong with America. There was a lot of
energy and then it seemed to drain away I think because
those independent mystery book shops started closing, you
know, something happened there and now it seems like
there's, you know, I think about Emily St.
John Mandel, and the kind of books she's writing, which are partly
suspense stories married to dystopian fiction,
you know, it does seem like maybe the energy is also
with the ad mixture of genres that you're talking about. I love the way, in the
Dublin Murder Squad novels, you do something so wonderful and everyone who's read
them knows this already, but you keep passing the
baton, so the spotlight shifts, you know, you've got one
character in the center and then in the next novel the partner
of that character will be in the center and we go
on and on from there. And what that also does is of course shift our
understanding of those characters. So we see them from the
inside versus the outside? If we see them in a
different context, does our reading of them change? I love to think about
the larger mysteries that novelists are
investigating and you know, tell me if I'm wrong or not even
near the mark, but I also think of you as a writer, a serious
writer, who likes to investigate that question of how
can we ever know? How can we ever know anyone? How do we know ourselves? How do we know anyone
else, you know? It seems like so much is
dependent on the context and the relationships
at that time, and those Dublin
Murder Squad mysteries, I think they would be a
wonderful group of novels to teach in a psychology course
you know, for that reason. That had to be in your mind
as you were writing them, as you were structuring
the arc of them that way. >> Tana French: Well, I
didn't do it on purpose because I don't go ahead
very well, but as I, no, as I got into it, as I realized
that I wanted to do the kind of chain-link thing, that was
definitely one of the things that drew me to it, because to
me this is probably the core point of the arts, of any art,
is that it gives you this chance to see the world, even
for a brief glimpse, through someone else's
eyes and to realize that this other person's reality
is as vivid and as present and as real as your own. And that they're experiencing
this world entirely differently and they're seeing you
entirely differently from how you see
yourself and every, every part of their existence
is shaped by factors and seen through a lens that
is not yours. And that's at the heart of
every book is it's this glimpse into somebody else's world. And I really like the idea
that by shifting from character to character, and also by
having unreliable narrators which I do a lot,
you suddenly realize that we're all seeing things through our own lens all the
time and that the lens shifts, the lens changes, you know,
the most over example is, there's a character called
Scorcher Kennedy who is in Faithful Place, he's
a supporting character, and he is this pompous
rule-bound, up himself [inaudible] because
that's what the narrator needs to see him as at that moment. And then he's the narrator
of the next book and he's not like that, he has his reasons
for sticking to the rules, they matter to him, he's
damaged, he's in pain, and he needs those rules
to hold himself together because he doesn't
trust his own mind. And I liked doing
that and going, the person who you think
you see has reasons that you will never know,
for being who he or she is. Has layers underneath that
we may never understand. And you know, you're
writing mysteries and the most fascinating
and beautiful, painful, all of those things
mystery of all, is the human mind,
is other people. And so I think it's a,
mystery is a really good genre to let you into touch
on that mystery. >> Maureen Corrigan: Yes, yeah. When I think of Scorcher, I
think of Broken Harbor and how that amazing setting of a
housing estate that's gone bust, is such a wonderful you
know, objective correlative to the way he is,
he's broken too. That amazing landscape, you
just, you keep coming up with or finding these settings in
your novels that are so vivid and they're just, you know,
it's a cliche but they are such a present character
in the novel. Do you start with the
settings, I mean do you have to have the setting in your
head first, before you can-- >> Tana French: Yeah,
yes, actually. Yeah, that is one of the
few things I do have, I have like a clear sense
of the main character, I have a really basic premise
and I have a core setting. Because you're right,
I love places and they feel very highly
charged to me and I put this down to the fact that we moved
around so much when I was a kid. So every place is sort
of assisted with a phase of my life, very strongly,
it's not that I've lived in the one place and it's
got all the different phases of my life. I kind of associate
different phases of my life with these different places. So they seem, they feel
in memory, very charged up with all those experiences
and I think that kind of led me to see places that way. Very deeply charged with
the experiences of people who have lived with them
and having a presence, a force almost, of their own. And I think that kind of
seeps out in my books. >> Maureen Corrigan: It
does, it absolutely does. Tana, you just spoke
very powerfully to really what a writer
can do, which is to bring to life someone who is not them. And to step very, into that
character's mind and history and make them available
to us, the readers. I'm just coming off of an
academic year where it seems like every class I taught,
85% of our conversations were about identity, understandably
given the year that we've had in this country, Black Lives
Matter, the Trump presidency, all of that, and so I'm
selfishly asking you a question that I wondered about
with a lot of writers; are there any characters
who you feel, as a writer, you don't have the
right to inhabit? >> Tana French: Ah,
interesting one. Okay, I'm a big believer
in the idea that we shouldn't
stick to ourselves. This goes against the
whole idea of, again, what the arts are about to me. The idea that I can only
write about a 40-something, third culture kid who's wound
up in Ireland as a writer. That's absolutely anathema to everything I believe
about the arts. But if that's said,
if you're going to write somebody who's not
you, you better make sure that you have some kind
of in depth understanding of what it is like
to be that person and that you have spent an awful
lot of time listening to people who have that experience. So I think there are
a lot of experiences that I couldn't write,
definitely not as, you know, from within, from first
person or as a protagonist, because there are not enough
years in my life for me to spend enough time listening
that I would understand that experience well
enough to do it justice. I think the biggest one for me has been writing Toby
the narrator in The Witch Elm, who's suffering from a brain
injury and who has been broken, pretty much, physically and
mentally by this brain injury. And I went, if I'm
going to write this, I had better spend a lot
of time listening to people who have gone through this. Because I'm writing
about something real, that has had a huge impact
on many people's lives and I would want
to get that right. So I spent a lot of time reading
everything on forums for people who we're going through
traumatic brain injury, acquired brain injury, trying
to understand, it wasn't just that I wanted to ask
people questions, because if you ask
questions of people, you're only asking what you
want to hear, whereas you need to be hearing what it is
that they want to say. So I spent a lot of
time just reading, just reading people's
experiences and what was unexpected to them
and what was important to them. Hoping that I would
bloody do this justice, because if you're going to
take on something like that, you would want to do it
right, and I have had a couple of people who either they or family members have acquired
brain injuries, say yes, that is true to what
it's felt like. And that was a huge relief. Because yeah, if you're
going to take on something that isn't your experience,
isn't your identity, you better be ready to do enough
listening to do it justice, and there will be places
where you can never, there's not enough
time in your life to do enough listening
to do it justice. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Yeah, that's, that's, that's a wonderful answer,
it's an answer I'm going to mull over, you know? Given all of the debate
this year in classes. But I, as a reader, my
greatest pleasure is stepping into the shoes of
people who are not me. I mean, sometimes I like to see
familiar places and emotions in what I read, but I also
like to go outside of myself, which I guess brings us
back to the beginning of our conversation
where we were talking about pandemic literature
and how you get outside of yourself through reading. I want to ask you one more
question, because your many, many fans will be angry if
I don't ask, what's next? What can we expect
from you next? >> Tana French: I am
a little kind of wary about even saying this because
I was so, I was so thrown like everybody else
by the pandemic, I hadn't realized
really quite how much of writing is your
subconscious working away and doing the job for you. And like everybody else,
so much of this year, like I haven't had
a subconscious, it's just been this smoking
wasteland [inaudible], so I feel like a wimp. Everybody else is out there
doing their job and I'm going-- [ Inaudible ] Pull it together! Stop being such a precious
little [inaudible] flower. But no, I didn't get an awful
lot of writing done this year, but I have got stuck back
into it the last while, and I seem to be, although
I'm still a bit dodgy about even saying it,
unexpectedly writing a sequel to The Searcher, which
was not the plan. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Oh interesting. >> Tana French: But I
realized for one thing that I had really enjoyed
spending time with these people in this world and for another
thing, there were more sweets in the pinata basically, felt
like there was more story, there was more story there. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Yeah, yeah [inaudible]. >> Tana French: I wanted to
know what would happen next, so I felt like those characters
might have a bit more story. So I'm starting on that and hopefully getting
somewhere with it. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Oh terrific, I think that's, that's terrific. Good, good. Well that's a teaser
for everyone. >> Tana French: It's early days. >> Maureen Corrigan:
Thank you so much for this conversation, Tana. It's been such a treat to
talk with you and thank you for all the books
all these years. Long may they continue. >> Tana French: Oh, thank you,
I will keep writing as long as you guys will keep reading. And thank you so
much for doing this, it's been absolutely lovely
and I so appreciate it. >> LeVar Burton: We hope you've
enjoyed this conversation, and now we'd like
you to hear more from the library's own
experts on this topic. >> Barbara Bair: Welcome
to the Library of Congress. I'm joining you today from
the Thomas Jefferson Building. I am Barbara Bair,
and I am a historian in the Manuscript Division. The Manuscript Division is one of several special
collections divisions in the Library of Congress. I oversee manuscript materials
in the areas of literature, culture, and the arts. The Manuscript Division is home
to the papers of many writers, including poets, novelists,
philosophers, and theorists. We have popular culture
writers too, including materials about the thrillers of Daphne
du Maurier, author of Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, Don't
Look Now, and the Birds, and the Ken McCormack papers. And writers of westerns, like
Owen Wister and Dean Brown. In the hard-boiled
fiction genre, the standout collection is
the papers of James M. Cain. Cain and his friend,
Raymond Chandler, author of the Big Sleep, featuring private
eye, Philip Marlowe. Both straddled the
worlds of fiction writing and Hollywood screenwriting. Several Cain novels
were made into films, including Double Indemnity, for which Chandler wrote the
screenplay with Billy Wilder, the Postman Always Rings
Twice, and Mildred Pierce, featuring a standout
performance by Joan Crawford. Raymond Chandler
wrote to James M. Cain on Paramount Pictures letterhead
in 1944, to say he was so worn out by working on screenplays, he was taking a break
in the desert. He congratulates Cain that
Warner Brothers has picked up Mildred Pierce, prizes
the positive response to Double Indemnity, and
talks about the different between writing dialog
for a novel versus a film. In the record copy of his
response, Cain writes back to say, he agrees about the
challenges in redoing dialog and he prizes Chandler's work
in the adapted screenplay. In 1946, Cain writes
to Joan Crawford at Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, to wish her good luck at that evening's Academy Awards in which she won the Best
Actors Award for Mildred Pierce. She write a week later to thank
him for his impact on her life. Cain's editor, Alfred A. Knopf,
meanwhile had written to Cain in 1934 to warn him that
after the success of Postman, the tough or hard-boiled label
critics had applied to him as a writer of psychological
crime novels set in urban landscapes,
might stick. And he was right, it did. The papers also include
galley proofs for the Postman Always Rings
Twice, with it's opening account of the drifter soon
to encounter ill fate. Come enjoy more in the James
M. Cain papers for yourself, or visit the library's
Motion Pictures Division for more examples of
crime fiction, thrillers, and western novels adapted
to film, many of them on the National Film Registry. [ Music ]
