A Word on Words; 0895; James Burke

plus because of the grant building in the world of books and there are other things like carrying and all morning in your story were downward mr johnson tennessee and he's a hat and even ladies and gentlemen once again welcome to word on words saving our guest is a is an author who has become very hot in his book so popular they are popular novels years an edgar award one of it is the creator of play interesting fascinating hour right i copy typed well welcome to dinner thanks very much john for having me on you show the morning for flamingos and black your blues two books both

built around this character you've created dave robicheaux where does where does this occasion come from where i am in the material up enough of the sunni area of nigeria let any law grad a lot that's right the ice in new iberia louisiana which is my family's home owned by attention southwest louisiana and i that's where to rest is talk but anyway the hour the protagonist in the four novels that deal with dave robicheaux davis does what i really don't know where is our agents while it sounds a little bit of a scene that it's a truth i have and this current novel i'm a morning for flamingos is my tenth published book an be a first novel in the series the full on another four for a loop

ivan the un rain i wrote i think in nineteen eighty five it was published by rodin eighty five and i wrote it after i had been out of prowl long time i was out of our hard that prep for thirteen years and a lot of success as a young rider by the time i was there before i published three novels with very good company scribner's in and houghton mifflin thomas white crowd and i thought i'd really arrived like that haley's comet and i discovered that its peaks and valleys and it wasn't until we see a state university press put me back in prentiss can i have another go at success i write writing guinness eighteen years and published most of the books i wrote are in rio to overcome an authentic south as well i am i am i'm i'm fascinated by him because in some ways he

seems like a fellow who could probably an army knife you pulling all of those around without it and they my guess is you found some way to get out of there and smart shrewd loud sounds like that's what also sort of always i thought about is the ceo a company somewhere may indicate that my guest the way he can hardly keep making harley keep body and soul together and in love strutting so the heroes almost that he's almost a result the calico figure of you think going i guess than the nearest thing i've seen truong is many of these most recent now for months on these

is selling staying in using those it's another private eye the cop in so on the phone the french and how wonder is their own laws as anybody of a new word and you know he came out of a new iranian narrative really drop iran's defiant well on the course that he's a policeman with niala police department gives a private i mean art well he's a homicide of the senate and i wrote two other novels both of which remain and publish that later became the stuff of the neon re written the novels set in new iberia about a young boxer in the year nineteen fifty nine didn't realize it at the time even though that book was to remain and publish that really the character was very similar to dave dave now you as much older course but i

wrote another novel about the search for the holy grail it's that certain taxes in nineteen eighty one that some of the characters became characters in the neon riot and i really believe jon that most of the creative process is against it is that as i've grown old drive come more mortar believe that it's god given and michelangelo watts was asked how he cut his figures and stone and he said he didn't cut the figure he released the figure from the marble and i think the unconscious works in that fashion the characters live somewhere in the unconscious of the artist shakespeare once said all our allies in the world and dreams and for some reason some people have that to how hot and it becomes a vanity or a presumption to think that we went out and acquired it and i say these things not out a huge no it as much as our desire to keep the power of cities have become vague

about its alleged bid to get made about before you yeah well you can understand i guess new orleans is it's all the city that i guess maybe any major metropolitan say could produce a really like about the show but new orleans has a special character special culture and and louisiana as a special case involves philip a former city of that that area nearby graduate we are a large cage piece of my family throws imagine and an adult so understand about rove should understand where he came from

what about the assassin bugs all well a question he says he's a psychopath enough i have written several novels a real a psychopathic behavior and that kind of character i think is often the most difficult to create because unlike an altruistic man such as dave robicheaux who represents everything that's admirable as he's a far better man than i the person like jimmie lee boggs i represent some kind of genetic failure that we came to explain the psychiatry is throw up their hands ultimately they don't know think the pathological personality is farmed for environment there is air indeed something aboriginal gene pool are the most disturbing consideration ultimately is is it possible there are those who would eat like evil as their way of life and i subscribe to the

last theory that blogs represents one of those was absolutely evil and there's no remorse is no conscience i would say that maybe our lifetimes we need a handful like summer obviously pathological week we have institutions for them they get in the headlines about papers but there are others who are far more successful in disguising the evil intent with which they go about conducting their wives feeling i was a newspaper reporter too i knew people i met shake the hands of public life and of the sublime electricity of my arm i think my god i've voted to vote then the helm bought this

black news is also part of morning performing on to able to get it you've already at both the only be a eu yes i just getting those is based on to his three people on christy well another cajun french means alliance and one in the life kids need tivo how to write bot he represents a kind of naive and now villainous innocence i guess are innocent villainy the kind of kid who are in goes through life with his shoe strings tight together you often comes to the attention of the authorities and ended up you see dave rover shows that he's an intelligent man and i think most professional people in law enforcement who who will be candid with you will tell your by large most of the guys in the gray bought bore hotel

system or inept and bumbling radio educators it means they don't belong to have done something wrong but the people who do the grade actually running loose with baseball bats are much more difficult to control a nice way and so as dave observes repeatedly we often treat criminality and the social imperfection emblematic like we needed people who somehow suddenly crystallize far as we think the nature of the problem and we deal with them because they're available they're available those who are much more insidious cunning were much more ingrained in the fabric of society those of wealth and power far more difficult out to do it all times because we don't wish to have they or us and this is what bases happening in this book is this kid is going to the electric chair angle of penn and dave has to you know carry him up there put

him in the automobile along with jimmy lee boggs who schedule for the electric chair one man is obviously evolves earned every bit of his ascendancy of the mayor is not only on comparatively speaking for less injurious as a criminal but as they eventually discovers that tivo should be in prison and all of that other words mean to run on thousand ideas that i was not right on it that the question is the next question then is if we know where the characters come from what about the structure of plot a man you know you got these three characters and then i you know dave because you hadn't before you have and in by carry blues and impediment into books before lazily so then where then the

squared do you again in terms of putting it on paper are putting into her word processor with it was a first step toward a plot that will take you two oh logical or illogical conclusion that that's a good question i i never know when and where a book i am is going i just know when it's about to start and i never can see farther down the road than perhaps to saints and i hear people say well they outline of books and what ernest hemingway once said something very good he never outlined anything because if he can outline it and he knew the future of his book the reader would chew and it would be interesting to read about the possibilities someone has to care i've experienced what about the

possibility of a character getting away from it and you got to catch a line you know with rows of the you know how you think he's got a function and suddenly the captors larger than life and larger than a roadie had designated a smaller characters diminishing grow your character not always says always say take on arc their own role and i feel almost sometimes is suspected that i know they're going to do certain things in talking about wake up in the middle of the night and realized that the wrong screw up the script is one that i haven't discovered yet that the characters write the script just as michelangelos said his is sculpted figures live within the stone to the fictional character lives in the pope of the paper in the trunk of the tree

and it sounds bizarre that you tell an analyst that you have myself but that seriously and i think that are the artist discovers that if he invests in our faith in his character of the character truly his humanity and as an aesthetically mixed the characters tends to to take on identity he lives by himself faulkner right before his death was asked what he thought of his lifetime's achievement and he said had i'm not live someone else would have written the same books and that's all he said and i think when he was suggesting is that the story was meant to be told he was elected to tell those stories of reconstruction the war between the states and eventually a triumph of good over evil in the south we grew up with someone else you go

out you were told that far and not that he sits at the us right before his death has yet and had a very difficult time by the end of his life he said these hills will find breath for in other words if he was part of the world around him they were inseparable but for some reason it was his job to tell the story of these hills will find breath from ellie and ask you about that i have had a couple of overuse of the nervous set there who suddenly they left nuland of viewers will someone will learn this before a level and a cause the culture and the nature of that

area with spotify to live creative juices i could not right the emotional peak north of america well i know that maybe perhaps other is just you know the people who create better an absence is like the heart grows fond are sometimes in romance but sometimes when we're all why when there's some distance between us and the factual reality the creative process of the metaphorical changes the metamorphosis rather it takes place more naturally but for me it was that was never a problem i know sometimes i do in the winter and if when i'm out of the sounds in the wonder i'll get down there i had to have trouble with because i get the more expect anything to be green and blue it is clouds rolling across the sky in

here is jeb you're a montana and my heavens i i start creating something at the typewriter palm trees and that's you know the way the gulf stream looks in on june the journalist i knew the core of the film a big time that clearwater tsa and what it has shown as a refugee first heard this that it was the james stewart is the dawn of justice to a politician or an awful and she it hasn't gone school there and stayed for a few years and wasn't quite an accomplished writer for her was she about kentucky's she was able to create she read one book called lots of five of the soviet invasion trac report trigger she won the buzz sawyer work against the wall and anger watching

and i really think that the fix it i've asked that question three or four pounds of riders who shared her birth interesting that you come along and eight books woe from from a friend your creativity plus some lamb and i'm in public you won the edgar award with lectures this correct congratulations made the yeah i recently found this thing looks those in folk stands and airports without trial paperbacks that never before published book written years ago great writers the back of a hit so they go back to their promises and say hey by the way on the box are you know related and a friend a few years ago is it possible that those two unpublished novels though suleiman they someday all

united published but i own militia have several actually i think to have for unpublished novels an end there's a publisher out yet he publishes for collectors show has made a generous offer eye enough to feel i think it's better to publish the things that you feel festive ally of the us sometime back tom wicker live neil diamond almost a bayou is published every day it was published yeah north carolina as a novelist i couldn't get a novel published and then finally he got half dozen paperbacks but if tom wicker could have one of the dozen books he wrote and indian in the press published a book for a book form by any publisher he believed that at the chance and he is so frustrated that he wrote those many books you know that i couldn't get on an upright couldn't

convince the public that this was something that he really wants to do and he laughingly expresses his frustration over that there's some he lives with that you feel frustrated by the book's unpublished or you think it was part of the evolving geniuses they're jeannie again that was from an album louisiana bar you could've gotten the black chair in the morning for falling out of your head and although the others believe you're absolutely correct yeah set it says though the thing that a person is working on his part of something much larger you just don't see it at the time and i found as a writer john that and a person simply has to stay true to his vision if you start thinking about the entirety of your commitments it is it's a burden so great that it just drive me insane because a writer works every day

without any immediate real warner mean a novelist it might be true years before that particular work is read by anybody else in so if i'm artist simply thinks each day as he works in her eyes was akin to day and everything i write i hope will make the world better place and if he never compromises his vision her vision after his artistic one that's enough rewards and i heard irving stone say that when i was eighteen years old he met with a small group of a super slow cow in southwestern louisiana institute well it to school and somebody ask him this question and he said oh the works were awarded enough he said just work at each day and then he said never write a story or a point to pay a bill because well yeah

and also to the frontlines of the who has played some bills i created a character called flesh to flesh was or is it is a journalist and rare in a novel stoddard was a journalist and boston sounds less fleshed it on this aid looks two three movies chevy chase's up reading gaol finally decided to flex was not enough that there was another challenge there he has written three serious but first really stop living in new england came to tennessee settle on a farm has written four hour call for lax about them for serious books i think they are terrific now three of the missing lima i don't think the publishers have taken him seriously

ah the reviews have been mixed but some very good and still in haiti wanted to produce another flinch now i'm no doubt whatever law it's known as tanf odds are you haven't hit the quota he he wants to change his place you've done for cajun got a row show but i think it satisfies you just point out lawyers another roadshow plot in you mr corona fifth book in the series now is with the culture mushers cherishes came out well rounded out of the conflict and out of the loss get back boogie which is the story of a country singer out in montana mr rideau well i knew it i was out of

print you know our hard burden for thirteen years i had written that book and it was under submission for nine years and it was submitted to fifty two new york houses and as his ally sheedy press that published it was nominated for a pure surprise and it's the book that put me back it wasn't until lots of that that little idyll by their man i get letters and phone calls from an awful lot of spying office and that post the atlantic ocean do more to boost spirits out their tv land receiving than anything else you can set is a true story of a fan but can you envision a time when you just get nothing here with a road show one another as well i know i am if you are happy with these books in a show in los angeles and not just entertainment it i find there's a bit of a social model i don't think you know in describing is a

message right i don't think there's a sub rosa effort to sue they couldn't overcome evil maybe they're really serving as the investment there is a there is a poetic justice in an story of box and t bone around a gender actually but my sense of my sense of that is a certain that there isn't that there is something to be said for it and who can create and a fascinating trading starts both around one more characters and carried through in the end i think that's what you say that you're satisfied well i yes two of these stories of course to have multiple themes and ends in you just enumerated quite a few of them of course they also deal with recovery from alcoholism to deal with political morality and dave knight is a moral mandate and

a moral and environmental like the system any any barriers within the system then as always the basis as well many ways at the house are these very decent and compassionate man but like most others he's flawed as well but also it's a story about our louisiana and the passing of at acadia and culture and of course there is passing it's been commercialized and it's automatic that saying that that's banning but then when things become when their perfect as her own it's the day new law as it is the times are changing and you know that or you know the south has changed in many ways for the better without a doubt but i hate to see yeah the chadian world that i knew oh my life disappear as it is very unique it's very different banks and

james lever author of black gerry blues and a mourning for flamingos as our destiny were downward featuring jon seaton program was produced in the studios of wbez and television hill tennessee match up