A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR PAUL BUCHANAN ABOUT HIS NEW DETECTIVE NOVEL, THE HISTORY OF L.A., AND BEING A WRITING TEACHER
Earlier this year, longtime English Professor Paul Buchanan published City of Fallen Angels with Legend Press, the first of three novels following the adventures of down-on-his-luck private investigator Jim Keegan. Like the best Los Angeles noir, the book is a thrilling page-turner exploring themes of deception, redemption, and the price of fame. Fellow professor of English Chris Davidson talked with Buchanan about the novel, his interest in history, and how writing makes him a better teacher.
Chris Davidson:You've written so many different kinds of things—children's books, memoir, true crime, YA fiction, family sagas, even a guide for college students. What made you decide that detective fiction was the next place to go? Or do you even think in such terms?
Paul Buchanan: I find myself reading about LA history a lot. There are few time-wasting activities I love more than rooting though the online archives of the LA Times. There are so many wonderful, weird and forgotten stories about Los Angeles.
Who are some of authors in the detective genre you've looked to over the years, and did any of their influence get into City of Fallen Angels?
I think the idea for the book was inspired more by the old Film Noir movies I’ve always found compelling. I like Chandler and Hammett, and probably James M. Cain most of all. My favorite old LA writer—who didn’t write detective fiction—is John Fante. I suppose he and old Bogart movies were the two main influences.
The novel is a period piece, taking place in L.A. in the summer of 1962, soon after Marilyn Monroe died, and her death repeatedly enters the thinking of the main character, Jim Keegan. Was there anything about her life and death, in particular, or about that particular time and place, that shaped the plot or ideas of the book?
I wanted to write about L.A., and Marilyn Monroe just seems so emblematic of old Hollywood in all its tawdriness and tragedy. I was walking past the Formosa Café when I was first thinking about the story, and I imagined her slipping in through the backdoor. I have Keegan glimpse her there, and it just felt like the right thing to have the book happen when news was breaking of her death.
Jim Keegan is a former journalist. What about that profession makes him a good detective? (I ask with full recognition that some might call him merely a potentially good detective.)
Almost all PIs are former cops, and I wanted to do something different. I liked the idea that Keegan would have majored in English as a college student because that would allow his world to be informed by and infused with literature. It’s hard to write a novel without thinking about and referencing lots of other novels. Making Keegan a former journalist freed me up to see his world in ways that were less limiting than if he had followed the typical path of the typical literary detective.
How does being a practicing writer, in a variety of styles and for a bunch of different purposes, affect your teaching?
Every time I write something—especially something large like a novel or play—I notice lots of new things about writing, and it allows me to pass those things on to students as I learn them myself. It also forces me to keep up with how things are done in the marketplace. The world of publishing has changed a lot since I published my first story, and being active as a writer forces me to keep up. I try to incorporate practical, professional considerations into my classes. If you want to be a published writer, you need to be able to write a compelling essay—but you also need to know how to pitch that essay in a query letter.
At the end of the novel, Jim Keegan is, we might say, in a bit of a tight spot. I know you've already finished the sequel. When will it be published, and what hints can you give us about its plot?
The sequel comes out in the UK next spring, which is when the first novel comes out here in the US. It’s another pretty straightforward noir story set in October the year after the events of City of Fallen Angels. I tried to put in a spooky element this time—just because I find that sort of thing fun when it shows up in novels and movies. The idea is that Keegan is haunted by the events of the previous novel, but he begins to wonder if he might be literally haunted as well.
Oh man, can’t wait!
Comentarios