A Word on Words; 0771; Walter Wagner

A word on words, a program delving into the world of books and their authors. Tonight Walter Wager talks about Otto's boy. Your host for a word on words, Mr. John Siganthaller, publisher of the Tennessean and editorial director of USA Today. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome once again to a word on words. This evening we're talking mystery. It's a book that's a thriller. It's called Otto's boy and there it is and its author is an old friend Walter Wager. I'm glad to see you. It's a pleasure to be with you John. It's always a pleasure to be with you to talk about one of your bizarre plots and this is the most bizarre of all. I have to begin by asking whether you are psychic. I mean if I were an author and we're writing a book and wanted to have a hit. I would hope that the first scene in the book a year and a half in the future would some way become a news

item in real life and that's what's happened here. Did you have some premonition that gets was going to create an incident? To shoot these people in the subway. Yeah, shoot people in a subway. I mean where did that, you think you're clairvoyant? I mean that's seen in the show. No, I should. I'm a registered Democrat. Well, yeah, that's right. You're also not very funny. I mean, and I'm glad this lost nine pounds. Like a little respect. And that doesn't show either. I'll tell you that. No, I don't think I'm I don't think I'm careful. I have had this quote problem cause quote before because in this book it starts with a mass slaughter in the subway. That's right. I had no, I, well, I guess one, if one thought about it, it was inevitable that someone was going to do that. My old friend, Brian Garfield, did the novel Death Wish and the movie Charles Brown.

Yes, all those are based on, although Brian says that when he wrote Death Wish, if anybody goes back and reads the book, the central figure was an unattractive psychotic, not a pillar of virtue driven around the bend. They hollywood in its infinite wisdom, those wonderful chaps who have one step from the fur business. They, they know the popular passion would be for vengeance. I didn't have any idea this. I needed a situation here in which you had a lot of people in a compressed place where this terrible weapon of mass destruction. You knew you were going to use nerve gas and you had, so you, so you took nerve gas and said, now where can I kill the most people? Or a lot of people. Actually, a lot of people get killed later on in the book. Oh, that's right. Yeah. But again, from a nerve gas. Yes. And I, but there my, I was wrong. The second mass attack with the nerve gas takes place in a movie theater.

Right. Actually, one of my own neighborhoods, which shows I'm getting lazy. And there were, makes your neighbors feel very good. Yes. About you and the theater. Yes. The most eighty-third street. About the owner of the Lowes, eighty-third street really loves Walter Wagey for what he's done to him. Well, I was told, no freebies to get in there for you. I'll tell you. Not till I'm 65. I was told that the Lowes, eighty-third street, no, I was told that the next door they're building a new theater, the Lowes, eighty-fourth street, with six theaters and being a rational person, I assumed when that opened, the old one would close. And there was talk. It was going to close. Well, and it was going to open a week before publication of this book. Can't beat that. I felt safe. Now, business on the west side is so good. They have kept all ten screens open, which is she agreed on the part of those people. And they're waiting. You're going to cure that, I'll tell you. Right. You kill off how many? Two hundred and fifty-two people.

Nobody I knew. Total strangers. But the opposite, I guess I tried to frighten people with the notion of nervousness. And if you know what nervousness is, I'm not a great scientist, and it took a lot of work to get the army to tell me something about it. It's not one of their favorite subjects for discussion. How realistic is the theft? We make it seem so simple, and we're worried now about theft of nuclear waste materials. Our nuclear components, so we're worried about nerve gas. I mean, the tragedy at Bhopal makes us all aware of what's being manufactured in some plants in this country. But how, you know, you analyzed whether this would be realistic, and you made it possible. I came up with a scenario. And having researched it, what's the reality, is it would it be very tough to steal a canister of nerve gas?

Well, I have a theory that no matter what system you create, a can is not going to be stolen. Somebody's going to leave it in the back of a truck some day. I came over here in a taxi this morning, some man, some nice man left his lunch in the back of the cab. I didn't trust what he had there, though, it wasn't my stuff. I'm sure you didn't eat it, but I didn't. But you did look it over. I certainly checked it out right here, that's my friend Walter. It was white bread, and my wife doesn't like me to eat that. No, but I'll tell you on the theft thing. I created a scenario in which a tunnel was necessary. And then rather casually in the course of my research, and I did a fair amount of research for this book, in checking the area in Utah, through which the convoy was moving, I discovered there was a tunnel, which was quite surprising. And I did find out from the Army that they do have helicopter gunships flying over it. I think they're doing, you know, reasonable precautions.

I'm doing another novel now, which involves air traffic control and the bad people. And the FAA has assured me, they give me a lot of information, I must say, I have to thank them. I've been in the Kennedy Tower where they told me I could never get, et cetera. But they've assured me that there's a little more beyond what they told me. So they don't mind my writing book. I would never write a book if I thought some maniac would do what I write in these books. Well, the real trick in the theft here was the concealment by the thief of his own identity. Yes, that's perfectly possible. That was a marvelous trick you played on all of us by killing him, or having him apparently dead. And I thought that was the, for me, that device came off very well. I don't know how it was difficult to create that.

I mean, it was easy. No, that was easy. Because his friend makes his friend appear to be, you know, his army buddy. No, that was easy. And also I found a particular easy, this may say something about my basically sweet and adorable personality. Getting the fiend was extremely easy. You just had to get out of the way. Otto's boy. Oh, yeah, Otto's boy. That was, you know, Otto's boy is, in effect, a 38 feet tall and covered with horns. I mean, it's the biggest monster I ever wrote. He looks like an ordinary human being, but he's a terrible person. And yet that was easy to write. I did consult two psychiatrists. One of whom is, you know, the heroine of this book is an Irish lady psychiatrist. My name is Red O'Donnell. Red O'Donnell. Yeah. I want to get, you know, I want to get, Red O'Donnell was one of my favorite people too. And you and I and Paul Hemphill are going to be on a program in a week or two. And I want to get into the business with both of you together, that whole, that whole

idea that you all can just take somebody's name and vein like Red O'Donnell's are mine, which both of you did. Well, I mean, I, I, your name is Bayon. I basically vein to start with, I mean, you could use a small or name, it wouldn't hurt anybody. Most people don't hang on to all those letters, John. It's just ostentatious and I've noticed it. Well, we'll say that. We'll say that for another, for another program. Right. But going back to the, the lady psychiatrist, what was most interesting, she wanted desperately to help me because she's a good friend of my wife's and she did help me. But when it came to giving her credit in the front, I said, Maeve, I'm sorry, thank you this way. Well, I was thinking of money. No, no, no, no, no, no, she's not, she knows you too well to be thinking of money from her. No, no, no, no, she's a very fine person. She has learned to live in New York City. I remember when she first came to New York, she went to work in a hospital in Harlem and mini skirts in the subway, which I didn't think was a smart move. But she's learned.

That was before she read about what your book about what happened to people in some way. She's still a sweet, sweet person. She does not believe in fear and danger. But she said to me, don't mention my name in the thank you credits because some patient might read the book and think the psychiatrist you describe in the book is really me and that would interfere with the transference. Well, in the world which I live, transference is what you get on a bus, you know. But if the person was kind enough to help you and gives you all this information, for example, she physically described to me the Academy of Medicine building where one of the scenes takes place, which saved me $1.80 in bus fare back to get into the building. I think it's my most exciting book. Your reviewer and your paper said at the end of the book, he felt drained. Well, at the end of the writing this book, I felt drained. I thought Telephone was exciting. I thought Telephone was really exciting.

I thought the movie was an aberration. I thought the book, Twilight Slash, gleaming the other movie was based on birth. I thought that movie was totally off the wall. I thought that book was not one of your best efforts. I was surprised they turned that into a movie. This plot has all the makings of a great thriller movie. I mean, I wish Hitchcock were alive. What he could do with Otto's boy. And speaking of Otto's boy, and I asked you if you were clairvoyant. About subway trains, and you said you weren't. I have an idea, though, that you did think of the son of a Nazi connection, and you knew this anniversary was going to come up. No, I didn't. I wasn't aware of the anniversary. You didn't plot to recreate the fear of a Nazi. This book has been cooking in my head for a long time.

And what you've done is re-created a second generational Nazi, and this is a son of a Nazi war criminal. So you didn't have in mind the anniversary is coming up, and so I'll play off that. Actually, in an earlier book of mine, a book called Time of Reckoning, there is a brief exchange in Berlin between a CIA man and a KGB guy. And one of them says- That was Folley's last gleaming. That's what- No, no. That wasn't. Vyper 3. Vyper 3, right. But in this other book, Time of Reckoning, which thanks to the wonders of tour books will be out in the paper back again next year, these two Cold War veterans talk, and the American says to the Russian, listen, we have a problem. I've got some really terrible people, the two of us have to work on, and don't worry, I'm not bringing any of those old Nazis. Because in fact, if you did the original Nazis, they would all be about 70 years old,

be wearing herniabels, you know. So you really had to have a second generation Nazi. But I've been thinking about this book for a long time. You had his- I had a feeling that you threw his mother in at the last minute, almost as an afterthought. I felt no. I felt the mother had to be there. His father, that's an ugly type of psychic. His father in this book was a member of the SS Division, who's people are buried in a bitburg. Yeah. Well, I didn't have any idea that you were plotting Reagan's visit to Bitburg. Obviously, you couldn't own about that again. I just wanted to see- I just wanted to see- I just wanted to see- And the money wasn't very good. But the mother you thought you had to get her in. I think the book could have ended without her. I don't think her- That contact had to take place, but you're the author. What was your thinking in- We don't know that she exists up until the time of the telephone call. Yeah, that's true.

I guess- You couldn't have traced him without the telephone calls, is that it? Well, that's what came to my mind. You know you plot certain things roughly. I am not very good at outlines. I hate them. One has inspirations along the way. Good ones, bad ones. And you always get better ideas as you go. So when you write, you begin with a plot in your mind, and you know where you're going to begin, and you think you know what the clincher is. Well, I do know that. I know the beginning and the middle and the end. And I know roughly what's going to happen. And any book- I could tell you in three minutes, two, three minutes, or three pages of typing, I could do that. But unfortunately, if there's any significant sum of money in an advance, which is what authors live on, especially authors whose wives are Irish Goldsmiths, instead of having decent jobs like most women, I mean, she could have done very well in the steam laundry. I've always thought so. You live on the advance.

And you have to give them a pretty good outline. Although if you do reasonably well on this new book, actually on this book I'm doing now, the editor-in-chief at McMillan, who was by the way, Hampill's editor. He said to me, you don't have to write the sample chapters this time. Just do an outline. But even then, I found myself compulsively writing a 20-page outline when I should have really written a five-page outline. Well, I mean, you're doing it for the advance. I mean, you've got movies, you've got paperbacks, you've got a book coming out every year. I mean, what is this? You talk like you're living in abject poverty. I mean, you're... Well, I'm living on Amsterdam Avenue, which is just a little south of abject poverty. I live in a very pleasant four-room apartment in a nice building. I used to live before my... I don't want you to get away with the autobiography now.

No. Let's just put it this way. I spend a lot of money on alamoni. You sound as if you begrudge that. No, not at all. No. I sign an agreement, and that's the lady's major source of income, and some other my only child, who is herself... It is going to turn into an autobiography, right here? Yes. I will tell you sometime how I discovered Nashville, right? I was out with either Daniel Boone or David Bowie. I get to mix them. No. Listen, let me talk to you about the next book, because it's interesting to me that you... The time you've completed it, and it's out, you're already into another. That's fiscal. That's fiscal. This is another... You're going to be another thriller, right? Yeah, I hope so. I hope it's a scary book. Well, this one is very... This is an exciting book. Boogie, I'll tell you.

The way I know this is an exciting book, is Friends of Mine, say, God, why didn't you tell me? I picked it up at 11 o'clock last night, and I could hardly go to sleep. I read 150 pages in one sitting, which I think is fine. I think that's the way a thriller should work. Now, the new book is not past as fast as this. It's a much more complicated story that is there more things coming together. That's dangerous for me. I tried that once in a time of reckoning, in which I had two stories intersecting, and you were going back and forth, and then they finally intersect. There are those who believe that's also one of my best books, that's a matter of opinion. But I'm not sure whether the intersecting slowed it down, the back and forth, and also it came...

That was a book about Nazis, too, because that was my angry book. Because this book moves so fast, you're right, the pace is there. One could read this book in a sitting, if you had an evening. You could read this book, Otto's Boy, in a sitting, and I'll tell you, it is a thriller. You do create other characters other than this villain who are fascinating people, and the plot of how they find this maniac. It's a nationwide chase, that's what it turns out to be. How do you capture the feel of cities where perhaps you've never been? Well. I use... Well, you do capture, you do capture them well, but I mean, you have somebody who's been there as... Well, you went to Utah, and you saw the tunnel, you had a lady who'd been in a building

in Utah. Well, I never went to Utah. I never went to Utah. There goes some time, I hear they have wonderful food. Who told you about it? No, I did once in... Telephone. In the novel. There was a big... It's another nationwide chase. Yeah, but there's a big description early on, as my wife would say, in her wonderful transatlantic lane go. Early on. There's a big description of Moscow, yeah. And somebody said to me, you may know him, Eli Evans. Oh, I know him well. Well, Eli said to me... Good writer. Yes, good writer, president of the Reveson Foundation. I salute him. He said, boy, you spent some time in Moscow, you described it accurately. I described it from travel brochures. You never been to Moscow. No, I hope to go if they don't mind my gun. Well, I heard that. Well, they were a little annoyed about that. Yeah, they get you in, you might not get out. No, no, no. If they don't like you, they don't let you in.

Walter, they might like you before you got in. I mean, you don't just grow on people. I'll tell you. Press I do. Press I do. I was told that the author... Yeah, it's a spray. You can get rid of me. I was told that the author of Gorky Park spent only three weeks. That's right, that's right. And wrote that whole marvellous tale in which he describes scenes and life. That's right. But you see, an author has to have a sense of feeling about what this book is about, a tone. And if you go to Moscow, I'm not saying I could write as well as Martin Cruz-Smith. That only history will tell. I thought he was an excellent book. And indeed, he wrote some good books before that that weren't really noticed. But I think if I went to Moscow and got a sense of what Moscow was, and in three weeks, I think I could also get the physical geography. That's not trick.

I got a letter once from a man, a call. I read a call from a man with a heavy accent saying, there was a factual error in time of reckoning as to what point in history, what day, garing killed himself. I said, oh, I'm sorry. I thought I had that right. He said, well, you should study these things. People read these books and take them as literal history. And I said, well, I generally tried to be accurate. He said, I'll say one thing. He said, you obviously were in Dachau because you described Dachau very well. I took that right out of a guidebook. You know, I read a book not long ago about, it was a piece of fiction, about Washington. And it was very disturbing to me, gotten away of my readings. Streets were not the wrong way. Yeah. I mean, you know, they had the Washington monument at the wrong place. Has been in memorials. Has been in memorials, right? That's right. The Lincoln Memorial, where the Jefferson Memorial should be. And I felt cheated, I felt that the author could have done about a job. How much does it worry you that you're cheating a little bit on that?

Oh, I take precautions. It does worry me that I'd be wrong. But I take precautions. For example, I had a book swap, which some noble chap has under option now for a possible film, they've got a script and God knows. There's a brief mention of walking into the lobby of the Tel Aviv Hilton. I remember that. Yeah. And the reason I know what the lobby of the Tel Aviv Hilton looks like is that the Hilton people gave me a brochure. There was a big picture of a huge handsome bronze door inside. So you could say as you walk past a handsome bronze door, or I got a brochure on what CIA headquarters at Langley is roughly about. And they say you walk past, I think, a bus to Valindolos is down in the lobby. Yeah. So as you walk past a dollar's bus, he thought so and so. That kind of little touch gives the reader the sense that you really know a great deal. And I do a fair amount of homework.

I mean, on this air traffic control book, I have been in the Kennedy Tower twice. I must say I'm a good boy, I sit there like a mouse, you know. This people were playing life and death, they can't discuss things with you. Although once I went in with the boss, and he could talk to me because he was like the boss of the boss. And he explained what all these things are and it's a fascinating setup. This country has spent billions of dollars to build the finest air traffic control system in the world. And I will say to encourage anybody watching, they are not up there on the edge of hysterics. They are working hard, but they are cool, competent, savvy people. Now when is this book coming out? Well, how many years? Finish it. Well, with the manuscript. I hope to finish it by the end of before July because we are going off to do some travel articles in the Far East. Well, I would like very much to get you back on the show because I was during the Great War.

I remember that. Because I was a control tower operator. No kidding. And when I get you on the grill, I'm going to really challenge the accuracy of your research and where you cheated. I'm going to say you cheated. Now, of course, air controlling has changed dramatically since I was at McDeal Field Florida fighting the Battle of Tampa Bay. They never mentioned you down there, Joe. I checked all of the trains here, and they did not carve the floor. What about Otto's boy? How do you feel about it, Walter? I've already said that I think it is the most exciting of the thrill books you've done. You've done some pretty kooky stuff. I did King Kong's autobiography, which was a nutball book. He liked it. Yeah, he loved it. But I mean, but his mother loved it. But of the serious books that you've done. Right. How do you feel about Otto's boy? I think it's as good as anything I've written. Because I got completely psyched up in this book, and I really, well, first of all, the hero, the stashing chap, lives in my building, my apartment house.

And I really got utterly involved in it. I finished this book, the wrong way to finish a book. We were leaving again for the Far East. And on the last day, I wrote 25 pages. Well, any writer knows you could be crazy. You can't do that right. Turned out to be fine. I literally finished this book at 9 o'clock at night. We had ordered in a couple of lobsters, because I knew we wouldn't be time for cooking. At 9.30, I had finished my lobster. I took a shower, dressed, packed in 15 minutes. My wife being a rational person had packed two days ago, and off we went. But if you get into the mood of the thing, now, Hamphill is doing this book about himself and his son. What is total mood? I'm confident it's going to be a marvelous book. It's inside him. It's not your laboring away. But you were in the mood and poor life.

I got completely involved. Yeah. Never like that before. Yeah. The one thing I found about this book that is different from most of your previous thrillers. And I mentioned this to you the last time you were on. You do have a pension for, I mean, you're a very funny man. And you have a pension and a serious book to throw in. My personal jest. Off the wall of jest. Now, I thought you handled this book very seriously, even when you take my name in vain, it is in context. Yeah. Well, the reason I didn't have jokes here, and I'm basically a cheerful person, despite the lies you've been spreading about me, John, I am not gloomy. But I was told by two very powerful people, that is to say my editor and my agent, that they would commit unspeakable indecencies upon my presence. If I put jokes in this book, they made the ultimate threat. They say thrillers with jokes don't sell.

Now in the face of that grim reality, you couldn't have jokes in a book in which a man murders 117 people in the first chapter. I, for example. You could. I mean, you would do that. No. I mean, you were perfectly capable of doing it. I, for sure. And I was surprised that, in other words, when you take Red O'Donnell and inject him in that book, you do it in context. You turn him into a woman, you give me a different first name and make me an FBI agent and somewhere in the floor. I give you a lifetime drink. Well, that is a new Walter Wajia, and I think Otto's boy is a new Walter Wajia. Am I right about it? Yes. But I have decided something, that the world should not be denied my good humor also. And I hope to write humorous things. God knows if they'll be successful. The editorial director of McMillan, now a very savvy lady called Arlene Friedman, has informed me with great politeness, but bigger. If you write a funny book, don't bring it here, we're not interested.

I mean, not even a thriller, just a funny book, because, as she said, she says funny books don't sell. I don't believe that. And at some point, I will sit down and write a funny book. I hope it'll be funny. I'll try to make it funny, because I believe in being exuberant, and you have to suppress yourself to write a thriller. Walter Wajia, author of Otto's boy, has been our guest on a word on words featuring John Siganthaller. This program was produced in the studios of WDCN Television, Nashville, Tennessee.