focused on the train going by at that point: what it looked like, not the timetable. The hallucinatory effect. He had swung back to point of view. ‘It has to be like a vision in a dream. I wanted to emphasize that they were dumbstruck and there was nothing they could do about it. It’s beyond their control.’
Another thing. Lee didn’t want Reacher stepping down into the dirt. He often got dirty, of course. But dirt here has been too closely associated with the rural natives and the hogs. We don’t want Reacher getting right in the hog pen, surely? So when the train eases to a stop and the doors wheeze open, now we have: Jack Reacher stepped down onto a concrete ramp in the lee of a grain silo bigger than an apartment house. It’s more solid. ‘I wanted it slightly higher tech, not dirt. We’ve had enough dirt. Dirt is for the hicks. And we need to know it’s all industrial agriculture, not bucolic at all.’
Later that day I’m with Lee in the back of a limousine riding to another TV studio downtown. Chauffeur-driven. All very suave. The sales figures were just coming in from the UK. First week of publication. Personal was number one. Of course. But the really interesting thing I noticed, poring over the stats, was that it was outselling the next thirteen combined. ‘Wow, it’s a massacre,’ I exclaimed. ‘The opposition has been comprehensively annihilated.’
‘I almost feel bad about it,’ said Lee, barely suppressing a wicked grin.
The also-rans included people like Martin Amis and his holocaust novel, Zone of Interest.
‘It’s good to have the literary guys around,’ Lee said. He stretched his long legs out comfortably.
‘Are they dinosaurs?’
‘Writing is essentially a branch of the entertainment industry – like football is – and I’m Chelsea, at the moment. Almost exactly. Doing well on the pitch, but only because there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes talent and investment supporting me.’
We had been talking about the Premiership earlier. His old team Aston Villa had made a flying start to the season. Seven points out of a possible nine. (‘But I’m sure they’ll break my heart later. They always do.’) Whereas my team, West Ham, had only managed to scrape three together. ‘Surprisingly, the American system is much more egalitarian. The revenue-pooling system, the draft, it levels the playing field, gives every team a chance. In Britain … remember when Villa were winning the league and Ipswich were right up there challenging them? Now … the first really are first, and the last are last. It’s harder than ever to make up the difference.’
A big fat New York bus cut brazenly across our car. The driver was spluttering after stomping on the brakes. ‘The bus is bigger than you,’ Lee said reassuringly, leaning forwards. ‘And he doesn’t care.’ He could see the point of view of a bus. He knew what it felt like to be a juggernaut.
I bumped into Joel Rose that evening. Joel is a writer, of the noir persuasion (e.g. Kill Kill Faster Faster and corpse-strewn graphic novels), with mad-professor hair, goatee, and John Lennon specs. He is less successful than Lee. Everyone is less successful than Lee. So naturally I happened to mention those sales stats. Lee Child annihilating the competition and all that. The Napoleon of literature. We were standing around on the corner of Charlton and Varick in the West Village. Joel thought about it for a while. Weighed the pros and cons. Then gave utterance to his considered judgement:
‘FUCK YOU, LEE CHILD!’
9 THE SONG OF REACHER
‘Professor Andy Martin,’ Lee says to me. ‘Come on in.’
Apparently Maggie had been checking my academic credentials, such as they were. His people didn’t want some maniac creeping up on him in the middle of the night. Or stealing his Renoir or whatever. Technically, I wasn’t even a professor (I was only ‘Doctor’), but Lee didn’t seem too worried about the detail. He had an unwarranted faith in the moral integrity of academics.
He made coffee. He reckoned there was some milk somewhere but he wasn’t too sure about its status. I took it black.
Lee hadn’t shaved; he had Reacher-worthy stubble. But he was in jovial mood, really enjoying being at the beginning of something. He liked it so much he didn’t really want to leave the beginning alone.
He had been thinking about the word ‘like’. Of course it was in the second sentence of chapter one – simile – but he was thinking of the contemporary verbal tic (I’d mentioned it in some article he had read to do with roaming around New York like a Trappist monk for twenty-four hours). ‘It’s actually quite economical. I like like. When someone says to you, “He was like ‘I’m so into you’,” it’s not that he actually said, “I am so into you.” It’s more, “He behaved in such a way that a reasonable observer might conclude he was so into me.” Which carries an element of doubt. Some kind of approximation has been conceded. So really you’re abbreviating the sentence, and implicitly acknowledging the power of impression, while also acknowledging the impossibility of knowing for sure … but it’s all still there. What was it Ezra Pound said – all poetry is condensation?’
His own chapter one remained stubbornly condensed too. We went into his office and he gave me a fresh printout of page one. There still wasn’t a page two. It was Friday, September 5. He had started the whole ball rolling on Monday and he was still on the first page. He hadn’t added substantially to what he had already written. But he had been finessing. Now he was focused entirely on what Reacher was doing or thinking at the moment he got off the train. Everything was contained in that moment.
‘What do you think of the word “onto”?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t have strong views,’ I said, knocking back the coffee.
‘To me it sounds ugly. I just don’t like onto. But I’ve written Reacher stepped down onto a concrete ramp. That is ugly. So I’ve changed it. Look.’
I looked down at the page in front of me. Jack Reacher stepped down to a concrete ramp. The on part of onto had gone.
‘It’s better, don’t you think? I’m not having onto. Never liked it.’
‘… down to a concrete ramp. Well, you changed what he is stepping down onto; I guess you might as well change the preposition as well, while you’re at it. To will work.’
‘I was thinking about what you were saying about dialogue. There’s no dialogue at the beginning. But it’s all dialogue, in a way, if it’s first person. Nothing but. There’s a Nevil Shute novel. The alleged narrator meets some old mate of his in a gentlemen’s club, who proceeds to regale him with some tale – and that is the story.’
‘A bit like those old Isaac Bashevis Singer novels.’
‘Exactly. Jacob comes up to him and tells him a story. It’s all dialogue, really.’
‘But that was Personal. First-person narrative. This is third person. So it’s not dialogue. It’s reportage.’
‘It’s funny. I feel as though I’m still just quoting. I did do two first-person narratives in a row. But generally I try to vary it. This time, I didn’t feel it had to be third person. There was no real sense of obligation. But the thing is, I knew it was something happening beyond Reacher’s knowledge or perception. So it couldn’t be his voice at the beginning. It had to be someone else’s. Third party, so it’s third
