Maybe I'm making too much of this, but I've been reading a lot of crime fiction this year, and reading a lot about crime fiction, and I've found that not everyone sees eye-to-eye on the genre. Most highbrow types -- those who read literary magazines, for instance -- dismiss it. Fans are understandably defensive, and seem content to spend most of their time reading only in that small subsection of the world. Both are clearly missing out.

So it was a pleasant surprise to come across Richard Lange. Most of the stories in his debut collection, Dead Boys, were first published in those small literary journals, yet most of the blurbs he landed for the book come from some of my favorite crime writers, such as Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos. The other names under quotes on the dust jacket are perhaps most revelatory, because they come from people who, in my estimation anyway, have bridged the gap between those two worlds, weaving tales that are so well-written that few could sneer at the fact that crimes are committed and bad people do bad things: Chris Offutt, Daniel Woodrell and others.

What does all of this have to do with Lange? Simply that his book, no matter where you put it on the shelf, stands alongside the works of all of those mentioned above. There certainly are crime elements -- one story, about a bank robber with a conscience was selected for the Best American Mystery Stories 2004 -- but anyone who dismisses the book because of that is a fool, for this is one of the best books of 2007, regardless of genre.

Lange is a graduate of the USC film school, but fiction classes with T.C. Boyle seem have had a greater impact on him. His professional background is in edgy magazines and book editing, pursuits that, as he says below, left him the time and the willingness to write.

The people who populate his books aren't people I'd want to spend much time with, but I'm glad Lange was willing to stick with them long enough to tell their stories. He also took the time recently to answer a few questions about his work. Do yourself a favor, read this interview, then head to the bookstore and get Dead Boys. You won't be disappointed.

TIRBD: These dozen protagonists are a pretty depressing bunch. How did you steel yourself to want to spend this much time with them? Did you get attached enough to any of them that you felt bad about the fate that befell them?

RL: I actually enjoyed writing these characters quite a bit. They have extreme personalities and go through some pretty intense experiences, but at their cores they are all sensitive men trying to cope with the chaos that surrounds and permeates them. A trick of the light can elate them or throw them into deepest despair. A disapproving glance from a loved one can break their hearts for good. They walk through the world with raw nerves and wide open eyes, furiously alive.

As for the second part of your question, it wasn’t so much that I grew attached to the narrators as it was that I became them for a while. I had to embed myself in their minds in order to create them, and so I felt their dread when things weren’t going well and their joy when they were. A pretty intense emotional experience at times.

You're championed by some heavy hitters in the crime fiction world, though all of these stories were published in pretty traditional short story journals. Is genre a consideration for you? Do you identify with crime writers or mystery writers?

I didn’t think about genre when writing these stories. That the book is considered by some to be a work of crime fiction is fine by me, but I wouldn’t call it that. I do admit, however, to co-opting the language of crime fiction, particularly the hard-boiled stuff, and injecting it into stories that might have been fairly quiet “relationship” pieces without it in order to heighten the tension and describe the violence being done to the characters’ psyches.

I don’t read a ton of crime fiction – a lot of detective books have too many scenes of people talking in offices for my taste, or they’re tough-talking iterations of Chandler or Ross MacDonald. I love Elmore Leonard, though, Charles Willeford, Jim Thompson, and Clockers was great.

While short stories don't always have a tidy ending, many of those in Dead Boys are very open ended; much more so than most. Was that an organic development of these stories, a conscious choice to try something different or perhaps a bit of both?

One of my intentions with these stories was to see how little actual plot I could get away with and still make readers feel like they’d had some sort of experience with the narrators. People who consume media are such experts in narrative nowadays that it’s possible to discard a lot of the old machinery and jump straight to the emotional core of a story, trusting that readers will be able to fill in the blanks. The open-ended endings are an extension of that. Do you really need me to tell you what happened next? And does it even matter?

People often say that place is an important character in their work, but for you, to say Los Angeles is absolutely integral to the stories is no stretch. Have you written stories based elsewhere? Assuming you don't spend all your time in the city's seediest parts, do you explore areas in search of settings for your stories?

I haven’t written any stories set elsewhere because there’s still plenty to write about here. L.A. continues to fascinate me and provide me with a wealth of characters and images to fuel my fiction. I’ve lived here since I was 17, on the east side, south side and in Hollywood, so I know the turf pretty well. The stories in Dead Boys are all set on streets I’ve walked and in apartments and houses I’ve lived in or visited and establishments where I’ve worked or done business. I could point most of them out on a map or drive you past them. I used these various real sites as stage settings for the fictional events that transpire there.

Did you always have fiction writing in mind, or was that a detour while in film school? How did your work for magazines impact your writing, if at all?

Film school was the detour, I guess. Shortly after I started, I realized that I didn’t enjoy the collaboration involved in the process. Too many cooks. I took some fiction writing classes from T.C. Boyle and found my niche. The screenwriting classes I took were helpful, however. They got me thinking about pace and structure and how to manipulate them. I learned a few important rules so I could break them later. I do love film though. Certain movies have been as important in my artistic development as any book I ever read.

As for the magazine work, I never took a job that required me to write, preferring to save that energy for my stories. I worked as an editor for years, and the skills I developed definitely improved my fiction. I’m absolutely merciless about cutting out the fat.

The second book of your deal with Hachette is reported to be a novel. Anything you can share about that project? Beyond the obvious, how is the writing process different with a book-length work as opposed to crafting a short story?

I’m almost finished with the novel. This time I’m actually trying to write crime fiction, so it’ll be interesting to see if I’m successful. It’s called The Kissproof World, and it’s set in L.A.

The writing process for the novel has been much different than it was for the stories. I’ve found that I have to be much more direct and explain things a lot more than I’m used to. I also had to open up my style, because the kind of compression I used in the stories would exhaust a reader (and me) over the course of a novel. In a short story you only need the most important scenes. There’s a lot more connective tissue in a novel.

For more, check out Lange's "Book Notes" post at Largehearted Boy.

Labels: books, Monday Interview