Mary
asked
Dennis Lehane:
Could you talk a little bit about what the city of Boston means to you and the role it plays in your work? In many ways, geography in your books acts as its own character and is one of many things I love about your work. What's your relationship to this city? More generally, how does the geography of a place you're writing about, such as Oklahoma or Miami, help you write the story?
Dennis Lehane
Well, my relationship to Boston is one of total love. Most people I knew who grew up in the city or its “spoke” neighborhoods (Boston is the “hub,” the neighborhoods are the “spokes”) are just goofy for it. It’s connected to my Dad, I think. He had an immigrant’s love of the place and he hated the highway, so he would drive me through all the neighborhoods to get where we needed to get, surface street after surface street through neighborhoods no one would drive through back during all the racial strife of the 70s. And it imbued me with both this irrational love of my city and a lifelong hatred of racism or anything that smells of it. As far as how geography helps me write a story, well, I can’t write about a place unless I understand the flavor of it. When I wrote about Oklahoma in THE GIVEN DAY, I was writing about a place that had gone from an outpost to a state in a few decades because of oil. Once I understood that, I kinda got it at a granular level. I’ve never written about Miami, even though I went to grad school there, but I did write about Tampa and, in particular, Ybor City. And what I grasped of Ybor in the 30s and 40s was that it was multi-racial and ghettoized yet thriving. And I could write from that place once I felt I’d brined it in my imagination.
More Answered Questions
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more